


May Day

by Onaa



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, X-Men (Movies)
Genre: AU: Grail, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Just Grail, Minor Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Nothing x-men verse after x2 is used, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Sibling Incest, awkward skype conversations, but go read Grail as it is a genious and the best fic written ever, joint x-men and mcu verse, kind of but not quite as you expect, maxicest, probably, specific content warnings will appear in chapters, stolen aircraft, the twins are mutants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-12
Updated: 2016-04-20
Packaged: 2018-05-19 17:05:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 53,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5974951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Onaa/pseuds/Onaa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wanda thinks about the ruin in Sokovia during the battle, about Clint Barton and his bow and arrow against an army of robots, about when she lost her courage. Clint is gone, he left immediately after they returned to New York. She would like to ask him what the hell she’s supposed to do now, as if he would know. Except, of course, that it isn’t her courage that she’s lost this time. It’s her rage. It died with Pietro, with the other half of her soul, with Ultron’s metal heart crushed in her hand, with every street, every house and alley, every tree, every place she’d ever known from childhood blown into a million pieces.</p><p>Wanda does her best to try to move on after her brother's death, but it's hard to function on her own, and she's plagued by memories of what happened, and of what didn't happen. Just when she thinks she may be finding her footing, a mysterious woman find her with a cryptic message. </p><p>AU based on the MCU + Grail: A Novel of Resurrection, a fanfiction novel published in the early 00s by an author called Minisinoo. It aligns with the X-Men movieverse through the second film, plus Grail.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Of All The Things That Have Happened, That Shouldn't Have Happened

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Grail: A Novel of Resurrection](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/175279) by Minisinoo. 



> First of all, my primary non-canon inspiration is Minisonoo’s Grail - A Novel of Resurrection. Jean, Scott, the X-Men, and Alex and Lorna as they are incarnated in this story are from Grail. Everything Fox has made after X2 is discounted here. There are also some turns of of phrases that are homages to Grail (and its prequel, Special - The Genesis of Cyclops), points if you can find them.

 

  


The question Wanda asks herself most, more than about Ultron, about the Scepter, about what she could and should have done different, is where all her anger has gone.  
  
 She’s become… she wouldn’t describe it as complacent, not exactly, but somehow reluctant to act. Part of it is probably entirely reasonable; her overeagerness to do something, _anything_ , to change things, nearly caused the end of the world. _Did_ cause the death of a dozen people in South Africa, Banner’s exile, Pietro’s death. Maybe she has learned her lesson. Perhaps it isn’t strange that she hesitates, at least for a while. Besides, Pietro was her bulwark. She proved a hundred times more powerful than he was, but he held her up. Without him, it’s as if a protective layer around her has been peeled off; in everything she does, she feels exposed, yet as if the world around her is foggy, distant, unable to quite reach her.  
  
She thinks about the ruin in Sokovia during the battle, about Clint Barton and his bow and arrow against an army of robots, about when she lost her courage. Clint is gone, he left immediately after they returned to New York. She would like to ask him what the hell she’s supposed to do now, as if he would know. Except, of course, that it isn’t her courage that she’s lost this time. It’s her rage. It died with Pietro, with the other half of her soul, with Ultron’s metal heart crushed in her hand, with every street, every house and alley, every tree, every place she’d ever known from childhood blown into a million pieces. It’s as if she is no longer capable of holding on to that level of wrath, that level of emotion of any kind, and without it, she is left unmoored. The first few weeks in the New Avengers Facility she felt almost like she was floating through an ever-growing number of days, going through the motions of living without really committing to it. Time became unimportant, and thus so did action.  
  
In the end, of course, it became unmaintainable. In the end, her brain started betraying her.  
  
  
She has a memory, clear as glass, clear as the sharply angled metal of the New Avengers Facility that is her home now. In the memory they’re young, maybe eight or nine, only just old enough to be able to discern their mother’s worry when they leave for school in the morning, when their father leaves for work. But they’re playing still. They’re throwing a small red ball back and forth at increasingly high speeds, steep angles. Eventually she loses sight of it momentarily, and off on the grass it goes.  
  
One of the other children - a girl they don’t know - catch it mid-bounce. As if in slow motion, Wanda can see the girl turning, smiling, and offering the ball back to her, arm outstretched. The girl’s shoes are bright blue, her eyes are brown, and Wanda can feel something in her abdomen twist, simultaneously terrifying and not at all unpleasant. The ball, the shoes, the girl’s smile, it’s all been etched into her memory forever.  
  
It’s just that she has no idea if it’s her memory, or if it’s Pietro’s.  
  
  
Wanda doesn’t cry, after they leave Sokovia. She is sobbing over Pietro's body, his slack face, the suit speckled red with his blood, but he isn’t really there anymore. She felt him leave, open-eyed and startled, and she reminds herself that what remains is an empty shell. So when her brother’s body is loaded into an aircraft for later burial elsewhere, Wanda takes a deep breath and starts helping with the cleanup. They’re all sweaty, dusty, and bloody, some of them more noticeably beaten up than others, but though her cheeks ares stiff and stinging, they are dry now. She keeps her back ramrod straight and her eyes open.  
And she doesn’t cry again. She doesn’t dare. She is fairly certain that if she ever allows herself to open that floodgate again, she’ll never be able to stop. That she’ll be powerless in the face of it, and although that’s a feeling she’s familiar with at this point, there’s also nothing she hates more. Pietro was part of her, and jagged edges line her heart where he used to be. There’s a weight in her chest, a thousand unshed tears, doing nothing to fill the new void inside of her, only weighing her down, making her dull and sluggish. Wanda goes nowhere fast now, limited to her feet and to vehicles that now seem unbearably slow. She can vividly remember the world as Pietro saw it; like molasses. Now she sees it sometimes too, the only difference being that she’s confined to its limitation. There’s no escape; never again will he carry her faster than she can see, feeling the rush of his heart, the elation of momentary escape from normal time. She didn’t even like it very much at the time, but like everything that reminds her of Pietro, the contrast to her new, lonely, life is harsh.  
  
She would have buried him next to their parents. Or perhaps, if she could choose, among the trees in the forest, far enough from the city that it’s almost entirely quiet, and where birds sing softly in the summer dusk. She wouldn’t have buried him at all, if she’d had a say. He’d be alive, next to her still, making snide comments about the other Avengers in the evening, his arms wrapped around her as they slept. But in the end she had no say, he is gone, and the cemetery where their parents are buried has been reduced to mere dust. So she makes the decision to bury him near her. There’s no one else to take into account, no one else who would come to see him, so with the help of Tony Stark’s considerable army of lawyers - she resents that, even as she is thankful for the little things - Pietro is buried in the state of New York.  They hold a funeral; they’re all there, silent and sober. There are rituals she should care about, or at least remember, but she can’t bring herself to. He’s gone, what does it matter what she does?  
It’s a cemetery in a little town perhaps twenty minute’s run from the NAF, she goes there almost daily for the first few weeks. She sits on the ground before the grave, trying to make sense of the fact that half of her, her heart and soul, is six feet under the ground, rotting in a casket. She can’t. She can’t believe in an afterlife, but the other option is equally ungraspable.  
 After she learns to keep herself on a busy schedule, she comes back less often, but always makes time on Sundays. She traces her fingers over his name, their birthdate, and feels like she’s balancing on the edge of a chasm, like the empty space inside her can rise up and swallow her at any moment. Then she walks down the carefully raked gravel path down to the main road, takes a left, and makes her way back to the Facility and the schedule she has composed for herself.  
  
Grief turns people astonishingly selfish. This in itself is odd, because Wanda desperately wants to think about anything but herself, about the void left inside of her. She develops a strict schedule; after breakfast, she spends time in the library, studying, reading up on what she has missed. It’s a nice library, and it takes only a few weeks for her to realize that new books often pop up in areas she’s showed interest. She has learned things over the years, sure, but it has lacked structure, and has been highly dependent on the goodwill of others. Now she starts over from scratch, reads the Greek philosophers, the history of Renaissance Venice, and Marx, learns about the Atlantic slave trade and the Ming Dynasty. Natasha sends her a link to educational videos, which are sometimes even more helpful, as the very act of reading often require more attention and energy than Wanda can muster.  
Before lunch, they practice, the whole team together, a few days a week.  It’s odd, learning to function as a part of a unit that isn’t just her and Pietro. She trusts Steve instinctively, and Sam almost as soon, if not due to his friendship with Steve, maybe because he’s so fundamentally likable. It’s more difficult with Rhodey; both because of Stark and because of Rhodey’s role in the army. In many ways, he represents everything she and Pietro has spent the better part of their lives hating. And she honestly doesn’t know what to make of Vision, hasn’t since the moment he burst out of the Cradle. Half of the time, he seems to ignore her and the others entirely, busy pondering whatever it is a computer come-to-life ponders. The other half, he seems to be watching her, she can feel it more than see it, other than in the corner of her eye. Not in an unpleasant or creepy way, just observing, like he could learn how to human just by seeing her do it. She’d like to tell him that as far as living skills goes, she shouldn’t be a role model.  
But train they do. Sometimes I goes well, other times it doesn’t. Nothing is obvious, roles have to be learned, and everything, everything has to be put into words. But it is also oddly satisfying, the way they’re making progress. At Vision’s suggestion, she starts attempting levitation. In theory, it’s nothing more complicated than turning the energy she uses to move things onto moving herself. In practice, it’s a lot harder. It requires her whole concentration just to float a few feet off the floor, and her first bad landing leaves her with her foot in a brace for a week. But it’s almost good. It’s almost good to do something new, and it’s almost good to devote herself to something so fully she doesn’t have any time or energy to think.  
  
After team training, it’s time for lunch. Steve insists that they eat as a team at least every now and then, which takes infinitely more time than when Wanda eats alone. She is a quick and methodical eater, finishing her plate in mere minutes and would prefer to move on, but the others take their time. Natasha eats very deliberately - Natasha does everything very deliberately - but Steve, Sam and Rhodey use food as social as well as physical fuel. They’re all three military men, so she knows they’re quite capable of swiftness, they just don’t see the point when they don’t have to. She envies Vision those days, as impatience starts crawling under her skin and her thoughts begin to race unchecked.  
  
In the afternoon, she spends some more time reading, and she eventually starts thinking about the library as her own personal university. She may lack classmates and grades and structure, but her teachers are solid and patient with her sometimes haphazard attention span. She feels as if she’s has an easier time assimilating information since HYDRA, but she doesn’t know if it’s her imagination. Either way, she plows through books with speed and determination, at least on the good days.  
 Then she heads down to the gym, and while the stated reason for that is to improve her fitness in general and combat readiness specifically, it also server her own ultimate goal: achieving exhaustion before bedtime. Once or twice a week, Natasha teaches her hand-to-hand combat. The lessons aren’t exactly soft, but they aren’t excessively punishing either; Natasha seems to make an effort to be a constructive teacher. It is only on very rare occasions that she forgets, drives Wanda a little too hard, and she always apologizes. On those occasions, Wanda remembers flickers of ballet dancers, a man with a bag over his head, and a gurney. She hasn’t forgotten that out of all the dozens of people she got into the heads of, showed their fears, Natasha is the only one who didn’t have a vision, a fantasy. She had a memory. So Wanda harbors no hard feelings although she also doesn’t say anything. She has only known Natasha for a little while, but she can tell that outspoken sympathy wouldn’t go over well. They’re a little bit similar that way.  
Those are Wanda’s days. And one is added to the other, forms weeks and eventually months. And as the routine of it all settles with her, it becomes harder to stop thinking. She realizes that she needs to change her schedule up, but it’s also the first time in a decade that’s she’s had a routine of any kind, and she’s loathe to part with it.  
  
  
Sleeping is the worst part. No, scratch that. Waking is the worst part.  
  
They were always close, as twins are, sharing a crib, a nursery, a secret language. Perhaps it would have been different if life had gone on as it started in their little apartment. Perhaps Pietro had gone on playing football with his friends every afternoon. Perhaps she had rode her bike around the city, watched movies with her friends on Saturday night, until one day they were old enough that one evening, one of them asked her what her brother was up to, if he had a girlfriend. And Wanda would  throw a pillow at her because it was just Pietro, her stupid brother, who barely needed to shave she fuzz off his upper lip and who seemed to need new football cleats every other month.  
  
But there was no apartment, no football, no bikes or friends or cleats. There was just them, alone in the world, with only each other for support and protection.  
  
In the first orphanage girls and boys slept in separate dormitories, so neither of them slept for days until they collapsed on the floor, her head tucked under his chin, his free arm wrapped around her back. They didn’t last long there; the goal was to have the children in foster care as soon as there were families available, and as few families were able to accept two ten-year-olds, separation seemed inevitable. So they ran. Novi Grad had no shortage of homeless in the aftermath of the bombings, and they were able to keep out of sight of the government easily. They had nothing, surviving on what they could steal or barter. But they had each other. And if they slept in a ruins of someone’s home, a parking garage, or the bare ground, they slept together, Pietro’s breath warm against Wanda neck as they spooned together for warmth. They kept those sleeping habits; HYDRA provided adequate if not overly comfortable sleeping quarters; thin beds clearly meant for a person each. But they made do, they huddled together and survived on each other’s breath, until the day came that they were wheeled away on separate gurneys, and the weeks after, in separate cells. It was hell then as it was hell now, but could be endured with the promise of being reunited when it was “considered safe”. Wanda wondered what the hell that all meant, at least until she saw Pietro covered in bruises, his hands bandaged, from running into tables, chairs, walls. At least until she was suddenly inside his head and saw, first person, the odd jerks of time between slow motion and dazzling speed. But they were reunited, and he healed. They slept next to each other again. They slept as peacefully as people like them - homeless, penniless, lab rats, what have you - ever slept. As for Ultron, he didn’t always seem to remember that their human bodies had human needs of rest and nourishment. Wanda could go on for longer without either, drawing power from the world around her, but Pietro was the opposite. His body burned through energy at an alarming rate, and he took to napping while they were on the road, his head in Wanda’s lap. Always touching at rest. Never far apart. This is how they had been able to relax and let go, safe in the knowledge that the other way never farther away than a breath.  
  
Now Wanda struggles to get rest on her own. If she sleeps at all, she wakes up at the slightest sound, perpetually and fundamentally uncomfortable with being alone. So she gets what little sleep she can, spends her days training hard, making sure to be physically exhausted come nighttime.  
Waking has become her enemy. After several months, her body still hasn’t learned that he’s not there -  she thinks it may never learn. In the muddled waters been sleep and wakefulness she reaches out for him, finds nothing, and is thrown wide awake in a fit of panic. The entire weight of her life, the emptiness, the sharp jagged edges of her heart where his was torn from hers come crashing down on her at once.  
  
She usually arrives first to the mess hall for breakfast. Sometimes Steve is there before her, but most the time, she has time to start and almost finish her meal before anyone else shows up. She’s fine with being alone; it’s in the morning, when she’s still somewhat sleepy and unguarded, that the lack of him pains her the most. When they were little, he’d be at the table five minutes before her (he was everywhere five minutes before her), tapping a spoon or a fork against the table. Their mother would tell him to stop, and he would, for perhaps a minute before starting again. Sometimes he’d tap while actually eating. Always impatient, always on the way somewhere, long before HYDRA gave him the power to get there faster than he could have dreamed before.  
Now, Wanda fills her bowl with yoghurt and granola, starts a cup of tea from a bag, and sits down. It’s a little later than usual. She begins eating the granola before the tea is done, and as she finished the bowl, Sam walks in. He’s almost always cheerful in the morning, a trait Wanda would have found befuddling a year ago and does so even more now. He gets some coffee and sits down across from her.  
“Morning!”  
“Morning.” Her voice is a little broken; she thinks it’s the first thing she’s said today, aside from the customary panicked whimper at finding her bed empty, anyway. It sounds rusty, like a lock that needs oiling.  
“Waiting for something?”  
“Just my tea.” She frowns. Should she be? “Why?”  
He raises his eyebrows and gives her cereal bowl a conspicuous look. Wanda follows his gaze, and finds that she’s tapping the spoon against the edge of the bowl, a quick staccato cling-cling-cling. She hasn’t even noticed, the sound is so familiar, and she’s biting her lip hard. A thousand mornings flash before her eyes, a thousand impatient little Pietros who wants breakfast now, preferably five seconds ago. Has he snuck that far into her mind? Well, someone has to tap the damn spoon, and it’s not like he’s here to do it anymore. She stops, abruptly, mumbles something about being late, and leaves Sam looking confused, her teacup entirely forgotten.  
  
  
Wanda remembers how it started, how it ended. At the time, she doesn’t know how long they were aware of it, the fact that the way they look at each other, breathe each other’s scent like an elixir, the way their breathing speeds up sometimes, is not the way ordinary siblings interact. The night it finally comes to fruition, they're lying centimeters apart, face to face on a dirty mattress.  Perhaps it had always been there, or perhaps it grew from nothing into something very real just as they grew from scared children into angry, burning teenagers. Pietro is all she has. Wanda is all he has. It’s how it’s been, and how it always will be; they are each other’s. They were born together, one day they will die together, and at age sixteen they don’t what the other’s absence even feels like. That this is beyond what ordinary siblings feel for each other is only moderately important; they aren’t ordinary. They’ve survived what others could not because they have each other, it’s that simple. They glow in each other’s gaze, melt into each other’s touch, are only comfortable together.  
  
And here they are, on the mattress, in the dark. Still face to face. It’s too dark for Wanda to see much, but she can tell that his eyes are open, and she can hear him breathing, quicker and shallower than he should. It’s she who initiates, as it’s always she who initiates almost everything they do; she swallows hard and moves to her hand to his face, stroking away a lock of hair that has fallen into his eyes.  It’s a familiar action, but suddenly so much more loaded; it’s like electricity where their skin touch.  But he catches her hand almost immediate, knowing exactly what she’s doing, and for a second she can see him smile sadly in the dark. Then he gently moved her hand back on the mattress.  
“Wandika, no. We mustn’t.”  
It stings for a moment, but his voice is soft.  
“Why not?” she is quizzical more than hurt, there is no rejection in his word, not really, not for her.  
“It’s wrong.”  
“Isn’t stealing wrong? Breaking and entering? Squatting?” She is sixteen years old and burns with the fire of absolute conviction, but this isn’t  just a principle. This is her core. This is what they are. What is it that he’s afraid of?  
“That is different, and you know it. I--”  
Wanda sits up, and Pietro does too, sits in front of her and takes both of her hands in his.  
“No,” she says. “I don’t know.”  
“We’d be ruined. What if someone found out? What would mom and dad have said?”  
“Compared to how great we’re doing now? It’s not like it could get much worse. And what does it matter, with them gone?”  
He sighs, because he knows she has decided to be as stubborn as he is, and that he won’t be able to persuade her.  
“Wandika, please understand. Yes, we have nothing now, but think about later. Think about when we’re old enough to have proper jobs, make money. Think about how you’ll feel when you meet someone you want to be with.”  
She wants to protest, tell him that there’s no one she’d rather be with than him, that it’s not his job to protect her, that being with someone else would be wrong even if they didn’t feel this, because it would mean being apart. She doesn’t, though. He has made a decision, and his conviction is a more solid wall against her desire than hesitation ever was, so she accepts it, nods. They lie down again, face to face, and eventually fall asleep.  
  
That is the only time they acknowledge it. It doesn’t go away, they don’t pretend like it isn’t there, but they settle for silently feeling without action. Slowly, it fades into the background noise; just like they’re always somewhat hungry, always somewhat tired, they always long for the other’s touch. She never really regrets it. There are things she feels she can’t share with him, even after HYDRA, after she’s able to be so close to his mind they’re sometimes practically one and the same, but in the long run, it doesn’t matter. They’re still all they have, they are so close that there isn’t any room for regretting anything.  
  
Until he’s gone.  
  
If she hasn’t been careful to exhaust herself during the day, she’ll lie awake for hours, thinking about words unspoken. How she wishes she had been able to tell him about how her heart leaped in her chest every time he smiled, how she longed to run her fingers along his bicep, over his chest. How it smarted when he flirted with Gertie, with Zrinka, even when she knew she always was front and center in his life. It doesn’t help for a moment to know for a fact he felt the same thing; he wasn’t able to commit to it, and so she wasn’t able to share. She kept it bottled up, hidden even from him, a million chains of events with no hope of resolution compete for her attention and now at the center of it, this gaping hole in her life. Words she hasn’t spoken has become word she will never be able to speak, and the finality of it overwhelms her entirely. He is gone forever. She wishes desperately that she could believe in an afterlife, the idea that Pietro would be waiting for her somewhere beyond this world, but she can’t. She felt him exist in one moment and be gone the next, no trace of him beyond what she can remember.  
  
And that’s the other thing. She has  so little. There aren’t a lot of photos; Pietro left the single one of their family in the Tower in New York, so she can keep it safe still. But of just the two of them, or of Pietro? There was never anyone to to take them for, they were together always, and didn’t have the money for a phone anyway. After meeting Ultron, they had the means but not the time. She still remembers it somehow simultaneously in sharp relief and as a blur; from Sokovia to South Africa to Seoul to New York and then back to Sokovia.  But there’s one picture, taken on the way to South Africa. The light is bad, they’re in a cargo plane without much in the way of windows, but they’re elated, high on the thought of finally making their move, being able to make a difference. Their heads are close together and they are smiling, Pietro trying to hold the phone as far away as possible, catching as much of them as he can.

  
Wanda moves her finger over the screen of her phone.

  
She prints out a copy of the photo and sticks it at the edge of the mirror by her vanity. It’s one of the few pieces of furniture she owns, other than the bed and the dresser; she simply hasn’t felt the urge or need to get more. Also on the vanity is a lipstick he stole for her, back before Ultron. She’s used up all of the color, but the plastic sleeve with its peeling gold paint gets to stick around; she can’t bear the thought of throwing it away. In the bottom drawer of her dresser is his awful track jacket with the chevrons. That’s it. A whole lifetime, nearly twenty years, reduced to two pictures, a broken lipstick, and a worn out jacket. No one will truly know the difference he’s made. For her, for the world, for Zrinka’s brother. There are barely any traces of him, like he never existed at all.  
  
Wanda realizes, from the many books she reads, from what Sam says and from some superficial prodding into his mind, that part of her grief is perfectly normal, mundane in its agony. People lose each other every day. Lovers and parents and friends leave never to come back. She takes to reading the obituaries every day, in secret, so that the other won’t realize and worry even more. _Our dear mother_ , it says, _our beloved sister_ ,  _husband and father_ , _mother and grandmother_. She thinks about the people they leave behind, the families and spouses and friends that are left with a person-sized hole in their lives. And she thinks about those without obituaries, the people who die alone in nursing homes and garages and under bridges. Not a single thing about it is comforting, she just feels dwarfed in her loss.  
But just as well as she knows that what she feels is partially normal - she thinks she hears his voice sometimes, turns to talk to him, forgets for a second that he is gone forever and is hit with it many times harder when she remembers - she also knows that some of it is not. They were born together. The others understand that intellectually, but can’t quite wrap their heads around what it means. They all cherish being alone at times, but to Wanda and Pietro, being together was the natural state of things. Being without the other wasn’t being alone, it was being half. They were always one, communicating wordlessly, always knowing exactly where the other person was in a room, never really needing to be without each other. It has always been that way; since they were babies, Wanda can count the times they’ve been apart for more than a few hours on her fingers. That’s more than closeness, that’s unity in its most basic form.  
And anyway, for more than a year, Pietro has been a constant presence in her mind. Sometimes in active communicating, flaring in the center with a fire she envied even as she provided a more constant source of white-hot embers. Sometimes pulsing at the edge, distant but still there, still a part of her and as accepting of that as she was of suddenly being picked up and carried at dizzying speed. They were one, they completed each other, and either of them alone doesn’t make any more sense or is any more productive than a bird with one wing.  
So it’s only natural that she loses it a little without him.

  
  
The telekinesis seems to be at least partially dependent on her temper; she hasn’t forgotten the wave of energy she created in her agony at his death, but she hasn’t been able to quite recreate it with the same force. Adrenaline, says Dr. Cho, and perhaps she is right; after all, humans find themselves capable of unbelievable feats of strength under duress. But Wanda also thinks she lost access to some part of herself on the fog of the months following Pietro’s death. Colors seem muted, and she has to strain herself to notice when people are talking to her. Having to hold all her communication in English isn’t helping either, and her struggle to be physically exhausted at night time is complimented with an entirely unintentional mental exhaustion. She feels like she’s climbing a continuously fraying rope; even as she holding on for dear life, she keeps slipping and sinking towards some kind of abyss waiting below. And then reality starts fraying at the corners.  
  
When she first emerged from the test chamber in the castle, it took her a long time to regain a grip on what was real. She could hear people talk when they never opened their mouths, see what they saw twenty minutes or twenty years ago, and sometimes when she wanted her water class hard enough it came zooming across the room towards her, spilling all the water and crashing into a thousand pieces against the dresser. And the world started fraying in the corners of her vision. It was as if reality was just a thin veneer, and if someone  - if she - were to just grab a hold of it where it was peeling, she could rip it all off and see what was below. Like something was boiling inside of her, hidden just below the surface. This was the most terrifying thing, and she tried to ignore it as best she could. Pietro was with her through all of it, as soon as they would allow him, providing a much needed center of gravity in her rapidly changing world. He grounded her, his warm (so warm, much warmer than ever before) hand in hers helped her establish borders between herself - themselves - and the rest of the world. And then she could hear him, as familiar as she always knew he would be, and they were tied together further, so much closer than their… doctors? wardens? could ever know. Pietro was right by her side as she learned to be this new Wanda, who could erase or deposit thoughts and memories in people’s minds, could move things by power of thought, and even better, utterly destroy them from a distance. His love, his support, his strength never wavered for a second, she knows that as surely as she knows herself.  
  
And now he’s gone and reality’s edges are frayed once again.


	2. The Loss of Something Dear, At Age Sixteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’d like to tell Steve that he probably isn’t hurt, or angry. He’s probably just ashamed. People forgive each other with surprising ease, but they rarely if ever forgive themselves, and Wanda has seen the files in addition to his fractured memories, knows what they made Barnes do. She remembers a black-clad man with a muzzle and empty eyes seated across a table from her in a dungeon room. Steve remembers a charismatic young man, always a smile on his face, his heart full of hope and conviction. If Wanda hadn’t known what HYDRA are capable of, she would have found the two memories hard to consolidate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please read carefully: this chapter contains non-graphic depictions of consensual sex. It also contains semi-graphic depictions of attempted sexual assault of an underage character.

Once, when they had realized exactly what Wanda could and would do to people’s minds, but before she and Pietro were free to roam the castle on their own, the doctors brought a man to her and told her to empty his mind. He stumbled in in chains, either held up or barely contained by two guards, it was hard to tell which was which. They chained him in a concrete chair across the table from her, their way of handling him betraying that they don’t even think of him as a person.  She has come to realize that the doctors and guards that oversaw them didn’t entirely understand people - or minds for that matter - for all their supposed expertise. Not like she understands now. They can’t grasp that if she were to erase everything, he would be no good to them at all, wouldn’t be able to speak or stand or even think. But she doesn’t tell them, knows that they won’t listen anyway. She just jumps in, ready to scrub what must be removed away and let the rest be.  
What she sees in him is enough to fully persuade her of what she always knew intellectually: that all three of them, her and Pietro and this muzzled man, are in the doubtful care of a barely lesser of evils. Perhaps that was the point of the exercise to begin with. She removes years of torture, the kind he’s been subjected to and the kind he’s subjected others to, carefully leaving training and reflexes in place, in mere seconds. But there’s so much to work with, and, weirdly, the moment she leaves something it seems to start creeping back. There’s more, further back, warmth and love and togetherness that she recognizes well, and that she leaves entirely, buried below years of emptiness. Perhaps it’ll be there for him to find later, perhaps not, but she isn’t about to be the one responsible for taking it. She tells the doctors nothing, letting only Pietro know, silently. She can feel him agreeing with her, knowing the immense value of even a memory of love in an otherwise cold world every bit as well as she goes.  
  
Now, when she understands, she struggles with what to tell Steve. She knows he is suffering the same kind of agony as she is, with the added pain of uncertainty. He doesn’t know why Bucky won’t come back to him, if he is alright, or even alive. If he’ll ever be close to the man he once was, if HYDRA has gotten hold of him again, if he’s being tortured.  
She’d like to tell him that he probably isn’t hurt, or angry. He’s probably just ashamed. People forgive each other with surprising ease, but they rarely if ever forgive themselves, and Wanda has seen the files in addition to his fractured memories, knows what they made Barnes do. She remembers a black-clad man with a muzzle and empty eyes seated across a table from her in a dungeon room. Steve remembers a charismatic young man, always a smile on his face, his heart full of hope and conviction.  If Wanda hadn’t known what HYDRA are capable of, she would have found the two memories hard to consolidate. But they transformed her and Pietro too. Perhaps not as obviously, perhaps not as dramatically, but the Pietro and Wanda who entered the castle were not the same who eventually emerged, powers disregarded. They were even more closely bonded, but also more outwardly guarded. They used to have friends, back in the streets, used to share ideals and dream about an unlikely future. A year of experiments and pain and separation and reunion, colliding with walls at supersonic speeds and hearing other people’s thoughts as music and as the scratching of nails on chalkboard had turned them into something else, into soldiers tuned for battle. Wanda wonders if they would have turned out more like Bucky if they had been each on their own; she suspects they would. She has never been more grateful for Pietro’s existence than when she looks at Steve’s despondent face when he thinks he isn’t being watched, and never more sorry for the loss of him.  
So she doesn’t know what to tell Steve, because she knows what he will ask. She knows he leaves sometimes, late at night, and arrives before the rest of them wake up, following an ever unsuccessful set of  leads, or worse, finding old information from HYDRA. She can tell those nights from the others, not because his behavior is any different, but because his eyes are a little sadder, his smile a little more forced. And the thing is: she likes Steve. Against every instinct and every bit of disdain she has for the great American machine, she likes Steve Rogers. He is at his core a good man, she recognizes her pain that he carries every hour of every day, and she desperately wants to avoid hurting him further.  So she remains quiet. For now.  
  
  
  
In April, Wanda is standing in from of a sink in a ladies’ bathroom at Grand Central Station. It’s Saturday, she has taken the train down by herself earlier in the morning and is just swinging by the bathrooms on the way out. She rinses her hands, holds her right hand under the soap dispenser and… nothing happens. For about a second, nothing continues to happen and then the realization hits her like a punch in her solar plexus. She has spent to much time in the RAF and in fancy office buildings that’s she’s come to take bits of it for granted. She just assumed there would be a motion sensor on the soap, just a she assumed she’s going to have enough to eat several times every day, a clean bathroom, a bed to sleep in and medical care when she’s hurt. That she’ll have clothes to wear.  She thinks about those two kids, sleeping in ruins and under bridges, stealing food when they could and starving when they couldn’t. She remembers being so hungry she could barely stand, being dirty for so long that it stopped mattering. And here she is, in New York City, in new clothes, a stomach full from breakfast still and with snacks in her purse, on her way to what can only be considered recreational shopping. Retail therapy, Natasha had called it once, buying a pair of expensive sunglasses to add to an already impressive collection.  
Wanda technically doesn’t need any more clothes than she already owns. Her uniform is provided for her, as is workout gear. But she feels the need to be herself still, and herself seems to be something she finds in another black dress, another shawl. It used to be Pietro who got most of her things, knew instinctively what she would love, and now she falters a bit when attempting to do her own shopping. It’s not even a matter of money; even though she knows that her stipend is very modest, she has never had money like that in her life. And with her every basic need - food, board, even some entertainment - covered by others, so there’s plenty left for the frivolous. She saves, of course she saves. But after her savings has been set aside, she invests a small portion into remaining Wanda. She goes to thrift stores, mostly. The concept of people giving up clothes freely before they’re worn out is novel to her, but she relishes in it. She runs her hands over fabrics, tries on a hundred rings and necklaces, always settling for the reds and the black, but first always trying everything that feels right under her fingers. The process takes her several hours, but the simple physicality of it grounds her in a way only Pietro used to be able to.  So perhaps Natasha is right. She usually is. But Wanda is still shaken to her core under the harsh light of the station bathroom. She wonders what Pietro would have thought, knows that there wasn’t a molecule in his body that was capable of being disappointed in her, but wonders anyway. He died, he laid down his life, and here she is, on her way to shopping for a new dress because it’s fun, because she wants to kill time.  
  
There are some kids with their dogs and a sign asking for spare change just outside. Wanda gives them the what cash she has on her and takes the first train upstate again.  
  
  
\---  
   
After that abysmal night when they’re sixteen, after Pietro rejects the possibility of letting them be something other than brother and sister, she tries her best to be find someone that could suffice as a boyfriend, or at least someone to spend a few hours with, pleasure for the body if not for the heart. The problem isn’t that there aren’t guys around; there are plenty of them around Novi Grad, most as destitute and angry as they are. Sure, not as clean or with a future as promising as her mother would have liked - or any future at all - but plenty of genuinely kind people who also happen to be male and her age. If she had had it all figured out at sixteen, she probably wouldn’t have bothered at all, had kept her emotions percolating in their endless run through her, through them. But she didn’t quite know herself yet, and she tries to love others. She really, really, tries.  
  
Dimitri has been at the rallies as often as they have. He has an older brother with a steady job at one of the markets, and his eyes are the same warm brown color as chestnuts. She catches his gaze one night and smiles. He holds her hand, tell her stories quietly one night when they have a fire going. She lets him kiss her, first slowly, then with increasing intensity as he moves his hand up the inside of her skinny thigh.  
It doesn’t hurt, not really, though she is somewhat bothered by his scrunched-up face and spastic movements, and at least it’s over quickly. It also isn’t terribly enjoyable, especially as she hasn’t learned the trick of letting go, truly throwing herself into it. The second time is easier, though they’re colder, hiding out in an alleyway. She knows what’s coming and isn’t surprised. She can almost enjoy it, though the fear of discovery takes some of the potential joy out. It isn’t until a few weeks later, when they have some time to themselves in an attic of building that they’ve “borrowed”, that she understands. Dimitri is quiet once he gets going, that makes it easier. As he’s lying on top of her, she’s wondering if this is how sex is supposed to be. She remembers how she used to imagine it, used to wonder if she and Pietro… She closes her eyes, imagines it isn’t Dimitri panting, imagine it’s Pietro’s face close to hers, closer than she ever let Dimitri no matter what they’re doing. And it works. The terrible truth is that is works. She sleeps with Dimitri several times for the next couple of weeks, until mutual lack of interest lead to an undramatic demise.  
Does she feel guilty? Of course she does.  
  
Anto is everything Dimitri wasn’t; he’s outspoken and loud, more demanding of attention than even Pietro is. She meets him the spring she’s seventeen, as fate would have it exactly six months before they knock on HYDRA’s door. He compliments her, makes her feel like a grownup, and the first time they have sex he spends ample time attempting to make her come first. She can’t, though, so she ends up faking it. But the sex itself is much better that it was with Dimitri, technically anyway. She tries, tries her very hardest to stay in the moment, but her thoughts keep slipping, ever conjuring her brother’s face, and it’s only then that she comes.  
  
It’s a sort of secret holy shame that she carries, that she continues to carry until the day when, aged nineteen and in a glass-and-metal mess hall in upstate New York, she realize she also remembers attempting to fall asleep on the floor downstairs, hearing faint noises from herself and Anto, desperately trying not to listen but being unable to shut it out, finally pressing into the thin mattress for some form of friction and relief and hating herself - himself - for what he’s feeling. And remember Gertie, Ekaterin, Miljana or any of the other girls, soft skinned and curvaceous, and know they were equally substitutes. Perhaps she’d been less sharp-tongued towards them, had she known. But then again, probably not.  
  
Sam, who is sitting across from her at dinner (he has made to sure to do that at least once a week, for as long as she has let him), looks quizzical. Her face must display her surprise, her mix of relief and regret.  She wonders briefly what he would say if she explained to him what she had been thinking about, and can’t help giggling at the thought. It’s funny, in the bleak sort of way that anything is funny these days. He thinks she’s getting better, more well-adjusted, and here she is, remembering how both she and Pietro, though they never touched each other other than platonically, engaged in these ridiculous elaborate incestuous coping mechanisms. Normal relationship indeed.  
  
_How silly we were_ , she thinks. _How much time we could have saved by cutting to the chase. We would have been no better or worse off now. I would have missed you no less, or no more. The loss of you cannot be measured._  
  
\---  
  
At first, she thinks it’s mainly a exercise for her benefit; two days and two nights spent in the field with only the provision and equipment they can carry. After all, Sam and Rhodey have military experience, and Vision… is Vision, she hasn’t entirely figured out what he needs. But the more she thinks about it, though, the more it’s about Steve and Natasha attempting a Team Building Exercise.  Wanda finds herself surprised by wanting to do well. She wonders what is expected of her, contemplates prodding one of them to check, just to be sure. She doesn’t, though. Her respect for both Steve and Natasha is grudging, but it’s there.  
They walk for almost the entire day, and Wanda is bewildered to to find that she isn’t exhausted. It’s a wonder what regular full meals and exercise does for you; it’s been years now that she’s been off the streets, but she still finds herself thinking of herself as who she was before. Needing to carefully conserve energy, figure out when the next meal will be and where it will come from, moving in the shadows, avoiding being seen. And here she is, carrying a backpack through relatively choppy terrain, moving in the open, managing fine. Rhodey even admonished her for not eating enough the first time they stop to rest. This confuses her; shouldn’t she be economical with her supplies? Like this, in a controlled setting, when she knows they’ll be able to eat normally in two day’s time, she can understand not needing to, but how long has Rhodey gone without eating? Has he ever had to survive for two weeks on a stolen piece of bread, some dried fruit, and two cans of beans?  
“I understand the impulse  to be economical,” says Steve, not unkindly, and she knows he does. He, too, has had to survive on far too little for far too long. “But the point is to keep your strength up. Every calorie counts. Every meal skipped could be the one that determines your survival  - or lack of survival.”  
She eats the rest of her ration quietly.  
  
They take turns keeping watch, again, something the rest of them are used to. Vision doesn’t sleep, of course, but they can’t count on him being there (she knows that there is already talk of him joining Thor in his quest to find the rest of the Stones.) She would be fine staying awake, but that is not an option; sleeping on schedule is apparently as important as being awake. She has the second watch, and, as trekking through the forest is less exhausting than her usual daily routine, she stays awake all through Rhodey’s watch before hers, trying to count stars to keep her brain from running away with her. When Sam wakes up to to take over from her at three in the morning, she is genuinely tired, and falls asleep quickly. The forest floor isn’t so bad, she’s sleep on concrete before. _But not alone_ , her brain reminds her.  
Someone wakes her by shaking her shoulder gently in the morning, and as she is torn from dreams to a reality where Pietro is still dead, her response is the same as it always is: wild panic. He’s _not there_ , and in the second it takes for her to remember when and where she is, she can tell they’re all looking at her. She can taste his name on her lips still, her heart beating wildly. When she’s collected herself, everyone are getting very busy packing and pointedly not meeting her eyes.  
  
She’s still a little embarrassed over the morning’s events by the time they stop for the night the same day. There’s a campfire, and for a few minutes she is alone by it, the others on an exercise. I turns out you can neglect certain duties when you can fly without a suit or wings. Small comforts.  
After a little while, Steve joins her. He’s sitting quietly for a minute, poking at the fire with a stick, more as a source of distraction than with any purpose in mind. Then he looks at her.  
“It gets easier after a while. Your body forgets what it’s like to wake up any other way than alone.”  
And that’s it, isn’t it? She doesn’t want it to forget, doesn’t want to lose this last remnant of Pietro, even if it means never sleeping well again.  
She remains quiet, not entirely sure her voice will carry.  
“The worst isn’t the nightmares, “continues Steve, ducking his head down, and it isn’t a question. She shakes her head.  
“It’s the good dreams, they’re the worst. When we’re together.”  
“And then you wake up.”  
“And then I wake up.”  
  
She doesn’t say anything else. Everyone forgets how hard Steve fights just to stay afloat, even she does, and unlike the others she has absolutely no excuse. Like her, he was entirely alone, probably still is. Sam tries, but Steve doesn’t bleed on anyone. And he’s not that much older than her; that’s hard to remember as well. She’s known about Captain America since she was little, her mother knew about Captain America when _she_ was little, so it’s difficult to keep in mind that the Steve is not twenty-seven years old. She remembers his memories, the Valkyrie, the quickly approaching ice, just as well she remembers standing on a rapidly descending city, waiting for it to crash to the ground. Neither of them hoped to survive, neither of them _wanted_ to survive. And yet, here they both are.  
She swallows, hard.  
“They brought him to me, once.” She says, then. She doesn’t know if what she feels once it’s out is relief or increased apprehension.  
“I know. I saw the files.”  
That, at least, is a relief. Still, he needs to understand.  
“The doctors, the researchers, they… they don’t understand minds. How they work. They would have killed him entirely.”  
“And you?”  
“I took what was needed for them to back off. I was very new to this, then. But he forgot enough that they were satisfied.”  
  
Steve is looking at the forest floor now, not at her or at the fire. She knows he grieves for Bucky’s lost memories almost as much as he’s angry about what they’ve done to him.  
“Well, you’re not wrong about them not understanding. I don’t know, though. I thought he remembered things from before the war, but now… now I wonder if there was anything left of the Bucky I knew.”  
“There was. I could feel it. Buried below… below all of the rest. _They_ might have taken it, with their machine, but I just had no reason to. They forgot, or willingly ignored, I guess, that we were human beings. I’m almost surprised they didn’t cut us open, just to see what was inside. But I can’t forget, and I couldn’t back then.”  
  
Now Steve is looking at her with honest hope in his face. It takes years off of him. Wanda doesn’t know what it is about Steve Rogers that makes other want to do right by him, but it affects her as well. She feels a strange sort of pride that she’s been able to help. He loves Bucky, she realizes, much as she loved Pietro; entirely, totally, as if they were part of each other, with a touch of the pain of the forbidden. She may not be able to get Pietro back, but she’ll be damned if she lets Steve suffer the same fate she has, again. Acting on impulse, she leans forward and takes his hand in hers.  
“He’ll come back,” she says. “He’ll need to remember himself, realize that what was done to him wasn’t his fault. I think he’s ashamed, now.”  
“He has no need to be!”  
“I know that. You know that. But people feel a lot unnecessary shame, I think that’s one of the few things we all have most in common.”  
It he takes her point, he doesn’t let it show, and there’s only a short time before the others return from the forest.  
  
She has the third watch that night, and stays awake through the first and second. When Natasha wakes her the next morning, she wakes up the same way. No one looks her way this time.  
  
  
\---  
  
At one of their regular health checks, Dr. Cho brings up birth control. Wanda isn’t sure why, initially; even if her feelings toward Pietro had been entirely normal, sisterly feelings, her grief would still have numbed her to the point where something as advanced as sex was far from her agenda. Dr Cho explains that according to her chart, HYDRA had provided regular contraceptive injections, and that if Wanda hadn’t been experiencing any serious side effects it was probably a good idea to keep up the regimen. She shrugs. There hasn’t been any side effects as far as she noticed, but she also can’t really see the point.  
“Until such a time that you decide you want to have children, it is out policy that it’s best to have a form of birth control that doesn’t rely on you or any partner remembering methods or medications.” Dr Cho responds. “We’d like to cover all scenarios, including ones where sexual violence could be used as a weapon against you.”  
That was something Wanda hasn’t considered, and it’s chilling said out loud. Honestly, though, it’s a risk Wanda has lived with for most of her life, and only escaped narrowly a few times. It’s convenient, she supposes, to be able to prevent pregnancy under any circumstances, so she agrees to the injection.  
(“It may take up to four months after your last injection before you are fertile again, should you elect to end the treatment,” Dr Cho informs her, on autopilot, and that nearly breaks her.  
As if there could be a situation where she would be a mother. Like there was any available scenario, even a best-case one, where she would want to bring a child into this world.)  
  
There have been close calls, oh definitely. Perhaps the closest one was when they were thirteen. They had been near the market, hoping to steal something edible or at least be able to pickpocket some coins. But it’s nearly evening, the sun is setting and they have had no luck at all. Her stomach is painfully empty, and perhaps that is what makes it her stupid. She makes a too obvious move attempting to sneak a bread roll from a stall.  
“Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”  
She runs, but she’s thirteen and underfed he’s a burly grownup and catches her in less than ten steps. He grabs her by the arm and drags her off to an alleyway, shoves her and tears the roll from her grip, pocketing it. It’s torn up and unsellable, but she supposes it’s the principle of the thing. For a second she hopes that he’s going to be satisfied with that and leave her alone, but she has no such luck. He pulls her up again, squeezing her arm hard and pull her towards him.  
“So you think you can steal from me, do you, little whore? I’ll show you.” With the other hand, he pulls up her sweater and gropes her chest. “Skinny little bitch. Still, you’ll do.” He smells like sweat and danger and Wanda can’t move, can’t fight. She has heard that some animals are petrified by strong lights and will just stand there, unable to flee, as the hunter approaches to kill them. That’s how she feels now. She has a knife, but it’s in her shoe and out of her reach. Then he lets go of her chest and grabs her by the hair, trying to pull her face towards his, and it’s as if something ticks into place. She spits at him, twisting and kicking to get free. It doesn’t do much more than make him angry. He shoves her, makes a move for a punch — and lets go, swearing. It’s getting darker by the minute and she can’t entirely figure out what’s going on, but she knows Pietro is there, sees the metal glint of the knife he carries. He’s much smaller, but the man is unarmed so far, and shouts again as he falls against some garbage cans. A car passes by and in its residual light, she can see blood on the cobblestones. The noise will attract attention soon, probably the wrong kind, and she grabs Pietro and runs. They run until they can’t run anymore, until their throats are sore and they’re in the other end of the city. Then they clean Pietro’s knife with some leafs and huddle together under the foot of ones of the bridges. Wanda feels strangely calm, it’s Pietro who is trembling. She pulls him towards her, sharing warmth and comfort in the cool spring night, and when it catches up to her, when she wakes up in a cold sweat, it’s he who calms her down with soft words and a steady heartbeat. She knows that as long as they’re together, they’ll be safe.  
  
Then there is the doctor - Vasilije? - With HYDRA. On the whole, he was probably harmless, but during the initial exam, his hands linger a little too long on her thigh, her chest, making her skin crawl. Later, when she’s belted down and about to be rolled into the radiation room, he strokes her breast and cups her face, all the while grinning, as if to say “I know you’ll be dead in a few hours, what are you going to do about it?” Afterwards, after the first time she’s sent one of the staff into a semi-catatonic state with a vision of millions of spiders crawling over her, she asks for him.  
“Dr Vasilije? I understand he made some inappropriate advances towards you?” says Strucker, in a neutral voice. Those aren’t the words she would use, but she rolls with it. Besides, she hasn’t told him, hasn’t told anyone but Pietro, and only silently, secretly. Strucker must have seen and opted to do nothing. As expected. “I’m afraid,” he continues, “the good doctor is no longer with us. He took an unfortunate falls from the battlements last Thursday”. He gives her a knowing look. Thursday. Thursday was the first day they had let Pietro outdoors. Strucker keeps his eyes locked on her face, expectantly, as if her reaction will determine something important about her. She just shrugs. It’s a little disappointing, true, she had been looking forward to turning his miserable little head inside out, but Pietro finishing him off works just as well. She thinks about the doctor’s body crushed against the cliffs below, and it makes her smile a little. Later, though, when they’re lying in their respective rooms, talking to each other without anyone knowing, she’s more hesitant.  
  
_**You should have asked me first**_  
  
She can feel his confusion.  
  
_But he tried to hurt you_  
  
_**And I wanted my own revenge** _  
  
_Sorry_. There’s genuine regret in his thought  
  
_**You could still have dropped him afterwards. Besides, you couldn’t know that they wouldn’t punish you**_  
  
_You won’t, Wanda, Can’t you tell? They’re afraid of us_  
  
He places no small amount of pride in that thought, and she agrees, yes, the doctors fear them now, especially her. It’s a marvelous thought, the power they wield. Pietro, she can tell, thinks about revenge, about Stark and the Avengers, and he’s anxious to measure himself against them.  She is a planner, she wants to map out exactly what she can do, almost as much as the doctors want to.  
  
_What’s important_ , he adds, like an afterthought, _is that no one can hurt you know now_  
  
Two years later, in an exam room in upstate New York, she knows it’s not true. When she couldn’t be hurt directly, they just chose to hurt her through him instead.  
  
\---  
  
Wanda develops a minor obsession with normalcy, with what it means, with what it entails. The books she reads the most, other than history, are books about psychology and sociology. They’re not her favorites, she doesn’t particularly enjoy reading them, but she does, over and over, compulsively. Not the old stuff, Freud and Jung and dream symbolism, that she couldn’t care less about. But modern psychology, attachment theory, trauma treatment. She knows, on a deep and fundamental level, that she isn’t normal, hasn’t been exhibiting a normal behavior pattern for years, because they haven’t been able to live a normal life in a normal world. But she tries desperately to understand what _normal_ really means.  
  
There was a time when they had sibling rivalry, sure. When they were seven and she absolutely needed to have the exact same thing Pietro had, even if it was half a cookie or a spoonful of jam and she wasn’t even hungry. But what one had to understand is that by taking almost everything from someone, by removing from their lives not just their parents, but their home, their friends, and all of their belongings, what is left is tied so much closer. They were clinging to each other for dear life under that bed, as they had continued clinging to each other, sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally, through life. She can count on her fingers the times they’ve disagreed to any significant degree, and on one hand the times they’ve been angry enough to to raise their voices at each others. Normal relationships, she learns, have conflict, and the few they’ve had had been about immediate threats towards their life together; the few boys she’s shown interest in; the many girls Pietro’s flirted with, slept with. That’s probably not terribly healthy either.  
  
Then there’s the physical attachment. She learns that while constant physical contact is quite common among siblings in early childhood, especially twins, it tends to become more and more rare with age, usually ending with the onset of puberty. She considers that for a moment, and almost start hyperventilating at the thought of having gone through life without Pietro’s hand in hers, without his shoulder to lean her head on, without his lips pressed gently to her forehead for comfort. Those gestures have all been fundamental in their lives for as long as she can remember. Even without the conflicted, suppressed desire they’ve been feeling, their bodies has just been another example of their oneness. Like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, they belong together.  
When available, and when she’s sure she’s not going to be discovered, she looks at what these books says about sibling incest, but none of it is really applicable. Most of it is about abusive situations and their fallout, and doesn’t apply. Then there’s a few cases of siblings meeting and falling in love as adults, but that’s equally useless. Frustrated, she gives up. Maybe they’re entirely unique, although she doubts it.  
Having considered all of these things over and over, Wanda comes to the conclusion that the things she has truly valued in her life, the things that has made it worth an otherwise miserable existence, has fallen outside the realm of normalcy. She’s not sure what it says about her, about her ability to be happy, if she even _wants_ to be happy ever again.  
  
So she does what needs to be done, even though she doesn’t want to. She decides to ask Sam, although the doesn’t intend to give away the more private specific reasons she’s asking. She knocks on his office door mid-afternoon, hoping that she isn’t disturbing him but not worrying about it hard enough to look up his schedule. He shouts “Come on in!” without looking away from his computer screen, and then seems both surprised and pleased that it’s her. That, and a little apprehensive. She likes Sam, although she doesn’t really want to, what with his military background. But he’s is genuinely kind, and although she knows he has experienced loss, he has never once tried to tell her that he understands what she’s feeling. He knows very well he can’t.  
  
“Well,” Sam responds, somewhat hesitantly,  when she asks. “Normal isn’t really a specific set of behaviors of feelings. It’s more of a range, and even then it varies between individuals and groups. Now, there are contexts where it makes sense to be statistically average - physical characteristics like body temperature or blood pressure…”  
Wanda thinks about Pietro again, how warm he became after HYDRA. His new normal. Physically, she thinks, they haven’t been normal since then. But mentally?  
Sam has kept talking. “…but personal characteristics, the mental stuff, it becomes almost meaningless to quantify. Even if we did have a range of ‘normal’ behaviors for, say, people of your gender and age group, I would be be very surprised if you fit them, given your background. And that itself is normal. So you see why it’s a iffy concept. I only really worry about it there’s something specific causing you problems. Aim to feel healthy and functional, not ‘normal’”  
He leans back in his chair, looks at her seriously.  
“Now, I’m not going to lie, some of the shit you’ve been through? Way above my pay grade. At some point in the future, when you are ready, I would recommend you see someone with more expertise in the area.” He can see she’s starting to squirm, she can’t help it, and he backtracks a little. “Now, I said in the future. I don’t think that’s something you should do today, or tomorrow, or next week, or even next month. But there might come a day when you want to. As for now, I am glad you’re even here. I don’t think you would have been, three months ago.”  
Wanda can’t disagree; three months ago she had stood up and left when Sam tried to sit at her table for breakfast. But it’s tough to carry on alone, especially when she is so used to sharing everything with Pietro, without even having to put it into words. She looks down at her hands.  
  
In fact, it took her a while to figure out that Sam had an office; again with the grief making people self-centered. She guesses she just thought he did his job - whatever that is, other than flying practice and going with Steve on their secret mission - in his apartment. But no, he has an office, and here she is, about to try to explain that she’s doing fine, really, she is, if she just keeps busy and doesn’t think too much.  
  
“It’s just… everything feels very tough. Doing ordinary things, it’s like they require ten times the effort from before.”  
“And since you’re so interested in normal, I can confirm that is a perfectly normal response to grief. It’s both physical and mental. I know it doesn’t help much right now, but I promise you it will get better with time.”  
Does she really want it to, though? The same old question: does she really want to be a normal, functional, Wanda in a world with no Pietro in it? She doubts it still.  
“For now, I would advice you to be kind to yourself, don’t run yourself empty.”  
  
She glances up at him. A few nights ago she fell asleep in the library, forehead against a book, and didn’t wake up until a few hours later. He can’t know that, can he? But then again, she would be almost surprised if he didn’t.  
“I have to, though,” is all she can say in response. “I have to be so exhausted my brain shuts up and I can sleep.” Sam nods.  
“That’s certainly one kind of coping mechanism, and I am glad your first response wasn’t to look for pharmaceuticals. Now, there are certainly situations where drugs can be helpful, but when dealing with trauma like yours, that should be under the supervision of a medical professional, not self-medicating.”  
“Drugs don’t seem to work right on me anymore, anyway.” It’s not like she hasn’t considered it. It just didn’t seem worth it to try and fail. Again.  
“Ah, the joys of working with the superhuman physiology.”    
Wanda smiles, in spite of herself.  
“It’s hard, putting things into words. Before, Pietro and I… we never had to. We understood each other immediately, even before the experiments. We have always been each other’s whole world.”  
“And that’s part of the problem, isn’t it?”  
She nods again.  
“Now, again, given your background, your reactions are entirely natural. It was all you had. But in the long run, I would say you want your relationships with others to be an important part of your world, but not the entirety of it.”  
It sounds dreadfully lonely to Wanda.  
  
“You know, before HYDRA, we mostly lived in the streets. We were at an orphanage first, but they wanted to separate us, so we ran. Every now and then, there’d be an building to occupy, or someone knew someone with a basement we could sleep in, but mostly we were on our own. We weren’t old enough to have proper jobs, and it’s not there were enough of those to go around anyway. We had a tent.”  
She pauses. Sam is listening intently, she can tell that he’s relieved she’s finally talking to him at all.  
“Almost everything about it was awful. We were hungry, we were cold, we were almost constantly sick, later the doctors told us it was because of malnutrition. We were angry, so very angry. It’s what kept us alive. And we wanted out of it, every day, we wanted to be able to hold those who had put us in that position accountable.”  
She doesn’t outright say ‘Stark’, and anyway, it wasn’t just about him. It was about the whole machinery of war profiteers, of foreign forces on their streets, about corruption, about the inability of the so-called ‘international community’ to do anything at all about it. It was about the world that put they where they were and never displayed a sliver of regret or hesitation.  
“But… we had each other. I didn’t recognize it then, but people are very lonely. They go about their lives helplessly trying to find ways to abate that loneliness, but they’re alone. They are born alone and they die alone.” She looks at Sam, trying to figure out of she is accurately conveying the weight of her words. “We were not. We were one, we were born together. And I guess… I guess I always thought we’d die together too.”  
  
She isn’t crying - same old story, she can’t. But she has to force her eyes to stay open for a few seconds and swallow hard to stop the tears from coming. It has taken her months to figure this part out - and she started the moment she first looked into a doctor’s mind from her observation room -more like cell - in the castle. Humans are small, she discovered, and they absolutely, horribly, isolated from each other. They are only vaguely aware of it, though, and don’t know that every playdate, every sports game, every romance or ill-conceived one-night-stand is a desperate attempt to connect up, to belong, so end the isolation they are destined to endure. Except her. The first time she realized, she knew that she was only partially affected by it, having always been a part of something greater, and now she had been given the tools to end the isolation completely. Softly, gingerly she stretched out a tendril towards Pietro, careful not to hurt him as she had hurt the doctor, who she had sent writhing on the floor, her hands clenching her head. And he welcomed her! He opened up to her, their minds softly intertwining and forming a solid bond. So while s hadn’t been alone before that, but after, there were never real, definite, division between them. Communication was instantaneous and effortless, unity constant. And then he died. Suddenly, she was thrown out into the same unbearable aloneness as everyone is.  
  
“And like I said, everything was terrible. But if, if I could…”  
She can’t continue.  
“If you could go back, you would.”  
She nods.  
“Shitty together was still better than being alone.”  
  
\---  
  
It’s only a week away when she sees the posters. For some reason, she didn’t think International Workers’ Day was a thing that happened in America, hasn’t quite been able to shake her preconceived notions off just yet. Not everyone here is rich. Not everyone here believes that they’re better than everyone else. She tries to think of America through Steve more than through Stark, these days. Almost everything about Steve is admirable, but she also knows that almost everything about Steve is sad, that like her, he is soldiering through life day by day. Perhaps it’s appropriate. People are poor here to, and it’s almost worse to see the squalor of people begging on the sidewalks while people walk past them in thousand-dollar shoes. So Wanda gives spare change when she has some and tries to spare a smile when she’s capable of one. She’s been there. God, has the ever been there.  
She sees the posters. They’re not in the style she’s used to, but the message is clear: there’ll be a march. But can she bring herself to go, alone? She’s been a in a May Day march every year since she was so small she rode on her father’s shoulder. And Pietro has always been next to her, the familiarity of his hand in hers grounding her even as they were swooped up in the feeling of unity, of a common goal, of a common rage. The struggle carries on. The struggle carries on. That’s what she needs to hear, that’s what she needs to think. She might be a hollowed-out shell of a human -  still - but others had been far worse off and managed to carry on.. And you were never alone in a rally anyway.  
  
So she learns the English lyrics for The Internationale (there are several sets. This is endlessly confusing, until she remember that she doesn’t have to learn them in the first place, as long as there are people around her who know them) and early in the morning of May 1st, she gets ready to catch a train down to the city.  
  
It’s liberating beyond anything she has felt for months, beyond what she thought herself capable of feeling. She may not have Pietro by her side any more, but for a few hours, she is not alone. As they leave Union Square Park she is surrounded by thousands of people who are looking for change, who have come together in a march for the people’s rights. She can see signs for immigration justice, for women, against police violence, but they’re marching side by side. They can’t be divided by petty differences, and to judge America based on the actions of a few does nothing good. The people around her - immigrants, workers, men, women, Americans of all races, all creeds - all want to accomplish the same thing. Pure instinct keeps her TK near the surface, although she suspects this is far too public for any accidental deaths. She knows they’re not as common here as in Sokovia, but they still happen, and she has no intention of letting them happen on her watch. This protective instinct is new to her - she doubts she would have risked her own safety for anyone other than Pietro a year ago. It might be the Avengers as a whole, but most probably, it’s Steve. As it is, she doesn’t need to risk anything; twice she calms down police who seem a little too happy to escalate, but the TK is never needed. She’s relieved; it’s much more obvious. By the time the march is over she feels so much lighter, lighter and yet more solid than she has in years. Someone comes by and presses a flyer into her hand.  
  
Afterwards, she walks along the streets of the city, trying hard to hold on to the feeling. She sticks her hands in her pockets and finds the flyer; it advertises a number of local artists playing at a venue the same evening. It’s a few subway stops away, but she decided to head that way, she feels a deep-seated need to stay surrounded by a crowd of people with conviction, hasn’t quite realized how much she has missed it.  But when she gets there, she is suddenly shy. She doesn’t know how close-knit this community is, if she can blend in and just take part, or if she’ll stick out like a sore thumb.  
As it turns out, some people certainly seem to know each other, but others mill around, looking a little lost. The venue turns out to be part bar, part coffee shop, and although she could easily have let herself into a bar (the American drinking age of twenty-one still confounds her) she is relieved not have to. She orders a coffee and sits down at a two-topper; there is another twenty minutes before the music starts, the ride over has been a lot faster than she had expected. She has only had a few sips of coffee and is about to take her book out to pass the time when a guy sits down across from her. She’s not offended; space is becoming in short supply, but he doesn’t look like he’s settling in, instead trying to catch her eyes. Damn. But a second later, she recognizes him as the guy who handed her the flyer in the first place. He is tall, she can see that even as he’s sitting, with a reddish mop of hair and dark-framed glasses. Like most of the others in the cafe, he’s wearing a t-shirt and jeans.  
“You were at the march, right?” he asks. She nods, takes the flyer from her bag.  
“You gave me this.”  
It’s his turn to nod, then he holds out his hand.  
“I’m Christopher.”  
She takes it. “Wanda.”  
“I thought I hadn’t seen you here before. I hope you’ll like it, we pulled it together last-minute. Had an impromptu jamming session last year, people enjoyed it. I wanted to see if we could make it a regular thing.”  
Oh, so he’s one of the organizers. She feels less singled out; his nerves, palpable from across the table, have probably less to do with her and more to do with pulling this whole event together. She tries to look encouraging.  
“I haven’t seen any of these bands before, so I won’t know the difference.”  
“You’re new to New York, then? Or just to the scene?”  
She shrugs, not wanting to give away more than necessary.  
“I’ve been here a couple of months.”  
He smiled and nods again, then stands up to move on.  
“Well, let me know what you think, ok?”  
She promises to, then stays occupied with her book until the music starts. It’s fairly unremarkable, a lot of guys playing guitars and singing, but the third and fourth features are bands, and the finds herself enjoying their music. It’s a wild mix of what appears to be covers, from how well the crowd knowns them, original songs, and oldies that even she knows. The energy from earlier in the day is still buzzing, magnified through the music and perhaps from the fact that almost everyone here is young. Again, Wanda is reminded of energy from around a fire or in a unoccupied building in Novi Grad, planning tomorrow’s rallies. Impatience mixed with anticipation and hope. She wishes so badly she could show Pietro this. He would love it even more than she does.  
  
After the music ends, the crowd starts clearing out. She doesn’t want to let go just yet, though, and as the place is open until midnight, she decided to linger. She orders a soda, and as she is about to head back to her table as Christopher sees her and waves her over. He’s sitting a larger table with a bunch of other young men and women, all looking to be in their early twenties. College-age, she assumes.  
“Wanda, hey! What did you think?”  
“I liked it. Like I said, I’ve never heard any of these bands before, but… “ she shrugs.  
“I dunno”, says a black girl who is the only other woman than Wanda to wear a dress “I feel like we went over our sad-dude-and-his-guitar quota by like three hundred percent.”  
Wanda grins, having thought the very same thing, and several of the other girls chuckle. “Well, yeah, there’s that.”  
Christopher introduces her to rest of his friends, who are all quite pleasant, probably as energized by the event as she is. Wanda worries, as she always does with new people these days, about her accent, but no one seems to mind it, or have trouble understanding her. But eventually someone is going to ask, and it’s not like she hasn’t braced herself for it.  
“So Wanda, I hope you don’t mind me asking,” says Brianna, the girl from earlier, “but where are you from?”  
She takes a deep breath.  
“Sokovia.”  
“Oh.” Brianna is silent for a second then. “I’m sorry.”  
Wanda wants to shrug, because in the grand scheme of things, the loss of a country, or a city, no matter how devoted she used to be to the idea of it, is significant in the face of the rest of her loss. But the mention of Sokovia, has, as always, the same effect. The high spirits are immediately muted, people are pointedly not meeting her eyes, suddenly very preoccupied with their drinks and phones. Wanda isn’t really interested in easing the awkward atmosphere, that’s not her job, but Christopher smoothly changes the topic, and after a few minutes the conversation is running again. She is beginning to see why he’s the organizational force here, everyone looks to him for input.  
They start talking about other marches they have been too, other protests. They talk about on-campus rallies, Wanda tells them about the protests in Novi Grad, about when the UN came, about how it made absolutely no difference. She even talks about the planning sessions, and a little about the people they knew, the ones who were shot by police or simply disappeared. She doesn’t talk about how many times it was only her firm grip on his wrist that prevented Pietro from being one of them. How him being shot had been her greatest fear, her only real fear, for years.  
“I had no idea it was that bad,” says Christopher, after the finished.  
“Well, I guess it wasn’t always, or for everyone. We were… at the edges, you could say. Our parents were killed when we were kids, we mostly lived in the streets after that.”  
“There were nothing like Child Services, no orphanages?”  
“There were. We went to an orphanage, at first, my brother and I. But they wanted to separate us, so we ran. It wasn’t hard, back then society was in shambles, no one bothered to look for us. We made do on our own.”  
“Where is he now?”  
Wanda bites her lip. She can’t bring herself to say it, can’t force her mouth to form the words.  
“We were… separated, after all.”  
“Well, I hope you’ll find him again.”  
Wanda smiles a watery smile. There’s not much to be said. She just nods.  
  
The crowd is friendly enough that she doesn’t leave until she absolutely has to, running to catch a subway train and then running again to catch her train upstate. It’s after midnight when she makes it back to the NAF, and she’s just passed the lobby on the way of to the living quarters when she hears someone talking. It’s Steve and Sam, conversing in low voices as they’re walking through the lobby. Torn between two choices, she acts on instinct and melts into the shadows, encourages them not to see her. They’re in civilian clothes, Steve isn’t even carrying his shield, but it’s pretty clear from their posture and tone of voice that they haven’t been to a bar or the movies.  
“And if we do?” Steve asks, sounding more anxious than she’s ever heard him. “We’re being more and more limited here. I’m not even sure who we can trust in this building.”  
Crap.  
“There’s no point in getting ahead of ourselves. We don’t even know if he’s in the States.”  
“There are extradition treaties. In the long run, where doesn’t matter.”  
“Extradition treaties that a lot of countries don’t honor when there’s a risk of capital punishment.”  
“It’s not just that. He’s not going to prison, Sam. He’s not going to spend the rest of his life behind bars for something that was done _to_ him.”  
“And I am with you. Just… proceed with caution, ok? If the Accords are put into practice we’ll have more than Barnes to worry about.”  
“I just need to find him before they do.”  
  
They disappear into the elevator and Wanda sighs in relief. She doesn’t know exactly what’s going on, other than the Sokovia Accords are rumored to be legislation to keep people with special abilities, be they natural or acquired, under legal control. She already wasn’t sure she liked it, having a long history of not trusting the UN. But yes, she’s fairly certain that if push comes to shove, she’ll side with Steve and Sam. If that means going on the run, well, that’s where she’s already spent most of her life, isn’t it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The line "he’s not going to spend the rest of his life behind bars for something that was done to him.", I realized too late, is something I lifted in its entirety (from memory) from a Steve/Bucky fic I read at some point. But I can't remember which, so I can't credit. If a reader knows, by all means, let me know and I'll attribute.
> 
> Chapter title from the amazing Hello Saferide song 'X Telling Me About the Loss of Something Dear, at Age Sixteen'. Also some inspiration from that song in this chapter.


	3. Interlude: The Metal Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The room is large and metallic blue. It doesn’t have any windows, yet is still somehow bright, tastefully lit in a way that makes it appear as if the walls are emitting a light of their own. There is a man behind the metal desk in the far side of the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a short one. Enter some new players.

The room is large and metallic blue. It doesn’t have any windows, yet is still somehow bright, tastefully lit in a way that makes it appear as if the walls are emitting light of their own. There is a man behind the metal desk in the far side of the room, immersed in reading a stack of papers, carefully marking them up as he goes. He is old; his hair, long since grayed, is almost entirely white, but he appears healthy and alert enough, and he is smartly dressed.  
A bell chimes, and he glances up from his text. The woman coming in through the door would warrant a raised eyebrow pretty much anywhere but here; not only is her skin blue and appears to be covered in scales, but she is entirely undressed. That doesn’t seem to throw the man, though, as he merely gestures at a chair, which slides away from the wall and comes to a stop next to his. She walks up to it and sit down, putting another stack of print-outs and a flash drive down on the desk.  
“Mystique”  
She nods in greeting.  
“You were right,” is all she says at first.  
The man picks up the papers, starts leafing through them. There are pictures there, birth records, job contracts, newspaper clippings, and hospital and arrest records.  
“Her name is Wanda?”  
“There were two of them. Twins. The boy died during the Battle of Sokovia. His name was Pietro.”  
The man behind the desk puts the papers down, rubs the bridge of his nose.  
Mystique leafs through the files, produces a photo of a two teenagers, shouting at an unseen opponent. Between their anger and the people behind the, it looks like they’re participating in some kind of rally.    
 “I’m sorry, Erik.” She puts a hand on his arm, and he managed a small, fleeting, smile.  
“Do we have an idea of what happened to him?” There’s the distinct hint of rising, yet controlled, anger in his voice.  
“Well, I have some ideas. The Avengers still have Stark for software, I had to gamble to get into their system at all, but from what I found, it looks like he took a bullet intended for someone else. Died on the spot. Which is really too bad, he looks like he had a significant healing factor. Now Wolverine-level, but still strong. I’m going to take another look at his data tomorrow, not all of it makes sense.”  
“How… heroic.” He sounds somewhere been proud and dismayed. “And how is his sister taking it?”  
“Not well, I think. She’s living at their facility upstate, but she makes the trip to the grave at least weekly.” There’s tension in the blue woman’s voice, though it’s somewhat unclear exactly as to what it pertains to.   
“She made a sharp turn in terms of loyalties,” she says then. “There’s a chance she could make another one.”  
“If she’s told the truth.”  
Mystique nods. “If she’s told the truth."


	4. I Searched And Searched And Now That I Found It, I Want To Give It Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wanda thinks about a little boy watching his mother, father and sister be taken away by guards to be killed. She thinks about a little girl and boy huddled together under a bed in a collapsing building. She thinks of a furious young man traveling the world with blood on his mind and she thinks about herself and Pietro, about Ultron, Johannesburg and Seoul. Wanda hasn’t been able to talk to her mother since she was ten years old, can barely remember her face some days, but what she does remember speaks of a calm, composed woman. She cannot imagine that their boiling blood is something they inherited from her. So this is it, this is the origin of that fire? Not coincidence, not solely the fruit of years of destitution and fear, but build into their very genes.
> 
> She isn’t sure she likes it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're touching on quite a few things from Grail, here. I recommend reading it. I you don't, Wanda finds out about as much as you need to know.

They’re holding a meeting. Or, well, if there was any organization to it, they would be holding a meeting. As it is, they’re just poor kids huddled around a fire in the dark of the night, but they’re all idealist kids. They all have dreams, still. There’s going to be another rally the coming Saturday, representatives from the international community visiting, there might be TV cameras. They know very little about much help to hope for from the UN, how to strategize around foreign journalists. The thing is, no one puts very much faith in UN itself, but they’re still disagreeing. Pietro sees opportunity, Wanda knows this because they’ve discussed it at length, he believes  in getting the media’s attention. He has no illusions about what politicians can do, but thinks that perhaps if they can get through to ordinary people on the other side of those camera, if they can get them to see what’s going on, it can result in real change.

“There’s no fucking point, Maximoff,” Anto nearly spits. They’ve been at each other’s throats for half an hour now. “One: the journalists won’t tell the truth. You know that. They’ll angle it to make us look like shit-stirrers because we aren’t sitting pretty and eating the lies the UN has been feeding us for the last fucking decade.”

“If you would listen to what the fuck I am saying about strategizing—“

“Two: people at home across the world don’t give a fuck about some poor people far away. They’re too busy worrying about which fucking new car to get or where to buy their next fast-food meal.”

“Look, I am not arguing with that, you may very well be right.” Pietro sighs, runs the bridge of his nose. “But the protest is happening. You know it’s happening, I know it’s happening. We know for a fact that they may be filming us. So I say we use it to our advantage as far as we can. We might not be able to make them care or sympathize, but at least we can make them listen for a hot minute.”

It’s always disorienting when Pietro is the sensible one, but Wanda knows he’s right. They’re staring  down the barrel of the inevitable, and what they need to do is to make the best of it. She understands Anto’s anger, too, she shares it, but she doesn’t let it get the best of her. Frankly, he’s out of line even for him, being obstructive rather than constructive and getting in the way when he should be helping. They’re short on time.

It’s always like this when he and Pietro come to a head, they’re like dogs fighting over a bone, neither of them wanting to let go. Fortunately, this time Pietro has  the group backing him up.

“Look, you don’t have to like it,” he continues. “I don’t like it. But we’re working with circumstances outside of our control at the moment, and if you’re not going to be helpful, please go be unhelpful somewhere else.”

 

Anto leaves in a huff. She only sees him once after, briefly, and without Pietro present. Then comes HYDRA, and for a long, long time, she forgets him entirely. When she does remember, she wonders briefly. She digs deeper into his and Pietro’s rivalry and finds exactly what she knew she’d find; a tangle of conflicted emotions, hurt ego, and Pietro’s panicky fear of losing her. It comes down to that, over and over, this fear that overcame them. When they were together, there was never a doubt that they belonged that way, forever. But as soon as  a perceived threat emerged, he freaked out. She wants to reach out through time, to Pietro in the past, soothe his fears, somehow persuade him of her love, that nothing could take that away, not even an army of robots and six feet of dirt. But that’s all too late now.

 

\---

 

The day it happens, the day everything changes, it’s early May still, the warm New York spring has yet to turn into sweltering summer. The cemetery is calm, only the caretaker nods at Wanda when she passes him on the way to the grave. She nods back. They meet every few weeks, but he keeps his distance, leaves her alone with her grief, and for that she is thankful. As usual, she sits in front of Pietro’s grave for a good hour, saying nothing, shedding no tears. In her mind, she tells him of her week, of the team’s progress, of the tenuous political situation and of Steve’s fruitless search for Bucky Barnes. As always, it’s pointless, her mind makes no contact; there’s nothing to make contact with. As always, as she stands up, she traces her fingers along the inscription of his name.

 

When she returns to the path there’s a woman sitting on a wooden bench, a blonde woman in a blue pantsuit.

“You’re Wanda Maximoff”, she says as Wanda passes her, and Wanda frowns, stops, but refrains from prying, at least temporarily. She’s been very conscientious about her telepathy lately, has been trying hard not to breach people’s privacy, no matter how tempting. Yet this…  
   
No official word has been made about her joining the Avengers, although she knows it’s coming. In fact, a press conference has been planned and rescheduled twice already, she’s not sure why. She’s just been steeling herself against the thought of the attention it will bring. And anyway, the woman hadn’t been asking, she’d been stating a fact.

So she nods curtly. No need to give out more information.

The woman smiles, then stands up and offers her hand; she is several inches taller than Wanda, and wearing heels on top of that.

“I’m Raven,” she offers, patting the bench next to her to encourage Wanda to sit down, and with her blonde hair and pale gray eyes, she’s the least raven-like person Wanda has ever met.

“How do you know my name?”

“Oh, know a fair deal.” She’s smiling still, but the warmth of her smile is somewhat lost with the implication of her words. Sinister, that’s how it sounds.

Obviously this Raven person has an agenda, and Wanda sits, shushes her nervous mind and settles down to listen as Raven leans forward and starts talking in a tone that while it isn’t quite a whisper, still doesn’t carry far. Wanda tenses, weighs her options for a second, and decides to stay and listen to what Raven has to say.

“There’s a lot of chatter about you, Wanda, if you know in which channels to look. And I do. Read all the files. Not entirely legally, mind. But I’ve read them.” She’s still smiling a smile which still seems meant to be warm but isn’t altogether, a little too much like a shark’s grin. Wanda stiffens, purses her lips, starts preparing herself for what may very well be confrontation, though she doesn’t know yet if it will be mental or physical.

“Why?” A simple enough question, which in in all honestly not one that Wanda is expecting a simple answer to, but she might as well give it a go.

“Because you’re very interesting, and not for the reasons you believe.”

“And why, in your —oh, informed — opinion, would I believe I was interesting?”

“Wanda, really?” She sounds disappointed, and a little too familiar, too straightforward for someone who just met her. “Fine. You’re supposedly an Enhanced, were recruited and experimented on by Wolfgang von Strucker and possess psionic powers, including mental manipulation and telekinesis, you sided with Ultron but ultimately switched loyalties and fought alongside the Avengers during the Battle of Sokovia. Now you’re an Avengers. Does that sum it up?”

It does, and it includes more information not available to the public, so there’s there. Still…

“Supposedly?”

“Hm?” Raven arches a delicate eyebrow.

“I am supposedly an Enhanced. What do you mean by that?”

“Your mother was born in Germany, you know.”

Well, to be honest, she didn’t, if it’s true. Also, it a sharp veer from where the conversation was just a moment ago. She keeps getting derailed but can’t help following the thread. She really, really, wants to look into Raven’s head.

“What do you know about my mother? She’s been dead for a decade.”

“It’s all in the files, if you know where to look.” Raven pauses briefly. “Now, your mother, Marya. She was born in Germany, after her mother died, she moved to relatives in Sokovia, at about the age you are now.  She changed her name from Magda, in what I assume was an attempt to fit in. Or maybe she was hiding, what do I know? But she even went to university, which she wouldn’t have been able to do in West Germany at the time. Got a job at a museum, after.”

“You can tell all of this from… what?”

“Birth records. School records. A lot of experience with this kind of research.”

“Genealogy?” It comes out in a huff, more derisive than she intends, but something about Raven sets her teeth on edge. Raven, however, just keeps smiling her disconcerting smile.

Suddenly, Wanda knows with certainty that that is the purpose of that smile - to discomfit her, not to calm her. Bitch.

“In a matter of speaking.” Raven replies, “Now, there’s another important detail about your mother, and listen to me carefully well when I tell you this. She was about six months pregnant by the time your parents were married. Like I said, I am only going by travel records and university attendance, but I’ve found nothing to indicate that she and Django Maximoff had known each other more than about three months at that time.” 

Wanda says nothing, and neither do Raven, so for a minute, there is only silence. What the hell is Raven insinuating?

“I suppose you want some kind of comment to that?”

“I care very little whether you comment or not, I was sent here to present you with important information.”

“Sent? By who?”

“By the man who may likely be your biological father.”

Bullshit. Information or no information, Wanda has no reason to believe what Raven is telling her. But a quick, furious glance into Raven’s mind reveals no attempt at lying, or even misleading. Whatever else she may be up to  - and she is up to something - she believes what she says to be the truth, and she has faith in her own skillset.

So this is how it feels? Sitting on a park bench in a cemetery in the northeast United States, listening to a strange woman unravel the threads of the only things Wanda has known to be stable in her life? For once, she’s is almost glad of the numbness she’s felt since Pietro’s passing; she wonders, as she always does, how this would play out if he was with her. Well, she wouldn’t be in a cemetery, but how would he react to this information? That, at least, she knows for sure. She raises her chin.

“I had a father. He cared for us every day of our lives, until he died, a decade ago.”

“Undoubtedly he was an excellent father, I’m not here to critique his parenting skills. But like I said, she was six months along at the time they were married. With twins. It would have been impossible for him not to know.” Raven’s tone is vexatious, like she’s glad Wanda is engaging with her, but impatient. “There’s nothing to indicate he ever treated you as anything else than his own children.”        

“I don’t have to listen to you, nor do I have any evidence that what you tell me is true.”

“True. But I think you will listen.”

“You think wrong,” Wanda has had enough, doesn’t even bother to prod deeper, doesn’t care to know what else Raven has to say or think. She stands up and walks briskly towards the gate.

“I’ll be here again next week”, Raven calls after her.                                                                                                                                                                                                           

 

\---

 

Raven is indeed waiting for her again when she reaches the bench the next Sunday, although this time it in the shape of an elderly Asian lady. Still, Wanda recognizes her mind as easily as her likeness without even attempting to pry. Everyone has a distinct mental scent, and Raven’s is unmistakable, although she looks different.

So she’s a shape-shifter.

Wanda sits down next to her; there’s no use in pretending she wasn’t going to show up, that they aren’t going to talk again. As upset as she is, there’s too much she needs to understand to let this chance pass her by. Raven claims to know about her supposed parentage; whether she speaks the truth or not, Wanda wants that information, wants to investigate on her own.

“Since you left so suddenly last week, I have decided to cut to the chase today. I will tell you this: Strucker’s experiments didn’t turn you into what you are.”

Wanda stops cold. The details of hers and Pietro’s background aren’t entirely unknown - people who work directly with her are aware of them, as are some who was with whatever S.H.I.E.L.D. is now, but not random strangers. But then again, Raven has already admitted to doing extensive “research”, including into things Wanda herself didn’t know. _If they’re true, Wanda, if they’re true._ She gives, prods Raven’s mind, and is met with more resistance than she expected. Raven smirks.

“I’m sure you can find whatever you want there, if you just try, but it would take you a while, and it would be considerably faster just to listen to what I have to say.”

Ok. Ok, she’s dealt with weirder things. Weirder, more dangerous people. Scratch that; maybe not weirder. Ok. She nods.

 

“I should say, Strucker’s experiment didn’t turn you into anything you weren’t already. I have gone through all the research notes, all their tables and reports on you that I’ve been able to locate, and to be honest, there was nothing terribly sophisticated going on. There were more than two dozen research subjects in total, and all they did was stick you in a room and bombarded you with radiation from a classified source” she raises an eyebrow at Wanda, aware that Wanda probably knows more than her about that particular bit “until something happened. Usually, that ‘something’ was that the subject died. You were simply lucky.”

“Lucky?” Wanda blinks, not sure where this is going. She feels stupid, repeating what Raven just told her over and over again, but every new sentence seems to come out of the left field. Lucky? She and Pietro spent so much time being told, first by doctors, then by each other, and finally by Ultron, that they survived because they were special. They were hardier, angrier, move motivated. And now they were just lucky? A few months ago, she would have been more patient, ready to wait for answers, but her life has been ripped out from underneath her one time too many and Pietro’s restlessness has come to reside in her bones.

“You manifested”, Raven says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world, as if Wanda is fairly stupid for not figuring it out for herself. That was… unexpected.

“I manifested. As what?”

“A mutant,”, Raven responds,  carefully, like she’s talking to a very small, very stupid child, but also somewhat proud, less of Wanda herself and more of her mutation, which makes very little sense, as she’s not the one responsible for it. Wanda sends out a small telepathic tendril and finds her answer almost immediately; Raven’s pride of her own mutation is something she wears like an armor, a badge of honor.

“I thought mutants manifest at puberty?” she doesn’t know much, but this much she knows. If mutants aren’t born with their mutation obvious  - there was a boy in her primary school with scales all over his arms - they manifest their power as young teenagers. If you believed the news media, usually violently, but Wanda hasn’t believed the news media in a very long time.

“True, that’s most common. My current hypothesis is that trauma at a young age somehow suppressed it in you. I know of others who have manifested too early and only did so… only _partially_ at first. As it was, the extreme stress of Strucker’s ham-fisted attempt at _enhancement_ ” she almost spits out the word “pushed you to the edge, and your mutation was turned back on.”

“You have proof of this?”

“Like I said, it’s a hypothesis of mine. But I believe I can prove that you’re a mutant. It’s a simple genetic test, I just need a quick swab from your cheek—“

“No. Under no circumstances.” Wanda stands. She may not have turned out as savvy as she has believed herself to be two years ago, but she’s not about to give away genetic material to strangers. She also does a quick mental inventory: has she touched anything Raven has given her, eaten or drank anything? No. Good. She has to be careful.

“Very well. But then you only have my word. And have a a few more things you need to hear.”

Wanda sits again, leans back on the bench, creating an illusion of being relaxed. “Go on.”

 

So Raven tells her about this supposed biological father of hers, who was alerted as to their existence after the battle of Sokovia, how he found that she reminded him astonishingly of his sister in her youth. How that prodded him into looking into her - into _their_ , Wanda corrects her - background, and remembered Magda. It also made him look further into other women he had known throughout the years, including an American woman (Raven doesn’t tell Wanda her name, and Wanda isn’t sure Raven even bothered to take note of it) who had given birth to and given up a baby girl at a time too convenient to be a coincidence. The girl was adopted by a couple in North Carolina and is currently thirty-one years old.

“Her name is Lorna,” says Raven, handing her a note with a handwritten email address on it, “I talked to her this Wednesday. I’ll talk to her again tomorrow, in case you want to send anything along.”

Again, the self-satisfied smirk. It’s frustrating enough to push away the last resolve and spur Wanda info action, so she makes a serious effort to see what Raven is thinking.

This time it works. One: Raven is annoyed to be where she is. She has more important things to do, while the exact nature of them are shrouded, she doesn’t entirely think this is worth her time, or Erik’s. Erik. _Erik Lensherr_. That’s a name Wanda knows. Two: Raven is here anyway out of respect for Erik’s wishes, no matter how misguided she finds them, and because she believes Wanda has potential, and that if she were to be persuaded depart from the Avengers, she could become a valuable asset.

This is exactly the kind of thinking Wanda has zero patience with. She’s been a pawn, she’s not about to go into the same trap again, flattery or parenthood be damned. Still. She writes her private email address on a piece of paper, despite knowing that Raven could dig it up on her own should she desire to, then stands up to leave.

“Should Lensherr want to give me any more information, you certainly know where to find me. In the meantime, I have a job to do. Give this Lorna my regards, if you see here.” She makes a point not to sound upset, merely dismissive, final. She doesn’t really want to deal with any of this right now, although she knows she has to figure out more about Erik Lensherr, and that although Raven may have been fibbing on details, she certainly believes what she told Wanda. Which is rather a handful to deal with.

\---

 

Wanda knows exactly two things about Erik Lensherr: that he was in prison for an attempting an act of terrorism towards the UN summit on Ellis Island more than a decade ago, and that he somehow escaped around the time of the Blackout. She also knows that she shouldn’t make any conspicuous research at the NAF; she wants to figure this out for herself, and involving the team would make it a bigger operation and take it out of her hands. Plus, she’s still not sure she believes Raven, no matter how certain the other woman seems.

So Wanda decided to plan and spread out her research across several public libraries over the course of a few weeks, starting far away. But she starts looking through the collection of contemporary history in their own library, and finds more than she thought. Apparently Lensherr is considered worth keeping an eye on, although no one has heard from him in years, and he must be an old man by now. She realizes there are probably files on him in their research archive as well, but also that any attempts to read them would be logged. So she limits herself to the history books for now.

She learns that he was born in 1935 from Jewish parents in Germany, that his family was taken to Auschwitz, where they were all killed and where he first manifested his mutation, an ability to control metal and magnetic fields. She also learns that in the sixties, he was the suspected killer of a number of Nazi officers who had escaped to Argentina before the Nuremberg trials, but then went under the radar of everyone for nearly forty years before constructing a machine that would have forced an invasive form of mutation that would have meant the immanent death of hundreds of UN delegates, but was apprehended by an unknown force and left for the police to find.

There are three pictures altogether, all in black and white. The first is of Lensherr as a child; a small boy held by a smiling woman with a scarf tied around her head, standing next to a girl who looks like she’s around eight. Does she resemble Wanda? Or rather, does Wanda resemble her? Possibly, yes, the picture is grainy but she looks like she has the same large, almost cartoonish, eyes. The color of her hair is hard to tell. Behind them is a tall, serious-looking man.

The second photo must be from the sixties; Lensherr is alone in the picture, not smiling but appearing relaxed and in a warm climate; from the look of it, she thinks that the photographer must have been someone he was fond of. He’s wearing smart trousers and a white button-up shirt with rolled-up sleeves. Is she just imagining things, or can she see traces of Pietro in his face? It might very well be wishful thinking, but she thinks there something there, something about the cocky tilt of the head, perhaps?

The third is from a newspaper, Lensherr is wearing some sort of white jumpsuit, his hands cuffed (with plastic cuffs) being lead out of a courtroom. He appears tired, but not beaten. And she knows he managed to escape, an almost impossible feat, less than two years later.

 

Wanda thinks about a little boy watching his mother, father and sister be taken away by guards to be killed. She thinks about a little girl and boy huddled together under a bed in a collapsing building. She thinks of a furious young man traveling the world with blood on his mind and she thinks about herself and Pietro, about Ultron, Johannesburg and Seoul. Wanda hasn’t been able to talk to her mother since she was ten years old, can barely remember her face some days, but what she does remember speaks of a calm, composed woman. She cannot imagine that their boiling blood is something they inherited from her. So this is it, this is the origin of that fire? Not coincidence, not solely the fruit of years of destitution and fear, but build into their very genes.

She isn’t sure she likes it.

But all else being equal, she knows what it is like to have everything taken away. It might have taken the possibility of the literal end of the world for her and Pietro to take a step back, to be guided by something else than fury, but they had just been nineteen years old. Lensherr seems to be spent most of his life plotting revenge, unless something happened in the unchartered years. Nothing exists on Lensherr between the sixties and 2002 in these books. She knows nothing about him for that time period, other than that he apparently started appearing in the company of one Raven Darkholme, usually known under the code name Mystique, female, age unknown. There’s a photo of Darkholme, and although the blue scales, red hair and bright yellow eyes doesn’t look like anyone Wanda has seen, that too makes sense as the text clearly denotes that she’s a metamorph, confirming what Wanda already knows. Still, using her legal name must have been intentional. She wanted Wanda to find out who she is, and quickly too. The implications are worrying, but there is still nothing to ultimately prove Raven-Mystique’s claims. She’s been used for destruction once, she isn’t terribly keen to cause world-wide disaster again, and world-wide disaster seems to be Lensherr’s thing.

 

And yet. There’s the sister, Lorna,  who allegedly knows as little about Lensherr and Raven as Wanda does herself. She doesn’t like admitting it, even to herself, but she’s lonely. She never had to connect very well to others because Pietro and her always had each other. Now she’s unmoored, theoretically guided by Steve’s ideas of justice, but emotionally adrift.

Family.

It’s tempting, if only because she’s been lacking one for months now. If Pietro was here… She knows what he would say, but he isn’t here, and she is left to her own devices.

She ponders it.

 

The following Saturday, she has a computer reserved under a false name at NYC central library. The first quick google searches gives away about as little as the history books, looking deeper reveals a multitude of pro- and anti-mutant forums. The anti-mutant arguments are as predictable as she expected, not much different from the same old antiziganist bullshit she has been dealing with her entire life, with a few alarmist ideas of mind control and secret plans to overthrow governments thrown in for good measure. The discussion gets a bit more heated when dealing with a confirmed terrorist, but there’s nothing surprising. The pro-mutant sites, however, are a different matter entirely. They’re sharply divided between those who see Erik Lensherr - and by extension, Raven Darkholme - as heroes and potential saviors, and those who view them as mere criminals. There are manifestos from both inclinations, multiple references to the Brotherhood of Mutants, which seems to be an organization siding with Lensherr, but consistently refers to him as Magneto, and to the X-Men, of whom she’s never heard before, and who seem almost mythological in their elusiveness. According to some sources, they were the ones to stop Lensherr on Liberty Island, and to stop the Blackout. The Blackout - which happened while Wanda and Pietro’s parents were still alive -  also seems shrouded in shadows, and she has a hard time figuring out if there even are any facts, or if it’s all conspiracy theories. The same goes for Legacy, the mysterious virus created by Grail Pharmaceuticals under ownership by Sebastian Shaw, which killed a few hundred people, mainly in New York, and then disappeared from all records almost ten years ago. Aside from more conspiracy theories about how and why Legacy disappeared, there doesn’t seem to be any connection to Lensherr there, and she makes a mental note to look up more about in the Avengers library. That, at least, should be moderately safe ground. If she really is a mutant, and she supposes she ought to find out for sure, she should read up on her own history. The last search she makes goes in that direction; there is a large amount of scientific journal articles about _Homo mutatis_ , but the foremost expert on the topic seems to be one J. E. Grey, M.D, Ph.D. She sends herself some article links and packs up, making sure the librarian doesn’t remember her face. She really attempts to avoid mental manipulation if she can, these days, but she doesn’t want to adventure this process when it’s barely begun.

Of course, nothing quite goes as planned; scientific articles, it turns out, are jealously guarded by their journals, and while the computers in Dr. Cho’s lab in all probability have access, the one in Wanda’s apartment definitely doesn’t. Lovely. She can’t go to the medlab without being noticed, and so has to put off her research for another week, until she can access another library computer.

Instead, she thinks. Thinks about her mother and all the things she doesn’t know about her. Having grown up on her own, moved to a new country, alone, just like Wanda has now. She wonders about Erik Lensherr. What did her mother see in him, if only briefly? He wasn’t exactly young even twenty years ago. Was he knowledgeable? Had he charmed the young Marya with philosophy, poetry, literature? Did they share a politic? Other than the annual May Day marches, politics weren’t mentioned much in the Maximoff household. At first, Wanda had thought it was due to lack of interest, but the more she learned of the world the more sure she felt that it was a safety measure. What would happen if she or Pietro let slip some comment at school? They were so young. They had aged too fast, but before, before, they had been such clueless children. More than once, people they knew, or neighbors, just disappeared, or had conspicuous accidents, were accused of espionage or of treason and carted of to prison. So staying quiet on politics had probably been another way her parents tried to keep them safe.

The simple fact remains that she doesn’t know why her mother had done what she had. And dad. Dad. She remembers being very little, riding on his shoulders, holding on to his dark hair a little too hard, both of them laughing. She remembers him tucking them in at night when their mother had to work late, telling them old fantastic stories that his father had told him in turn. He had always been there, every day of their ten-year-old lives. What was a little bit of genetic material compared to that?

 

It had taken Erik Lensherr twenty years to figure out that they--  that _she_ even existed. Where had he been when they starved, when they nearly froze to death the first winter alone, every day for more than seven years on the streets?

 

But there’s a sister. There’s a sister who doesn’t even know she exists, who was brought up not knowing about them, about anything, but who is alive somewhere. It intrigues Wanda more than it would just a few months ago. Losing Pietro has meant not only losing half of herself but also losing her entire context. They mirrored each other, physically and mentally, and she’s curious to see what someone else, composed of half the same genetic material, would look like. What she would be like. And if Raven-Mystique is right, if she has the X-gene, does Lorna have it too? Knowing what she now knows about Raven and Lensherr, she honestly doubts that they’d even take note of Lorna if she didn’t. Plus, Wanda isn’t entirely sure how the X-gene inherits, and really needs to look those articles up.

 

She thinks about Lorna again as she’s brushing her teeth that night. She should be around thirty years old. Is she married, does she have children? Is Wanda an aunt without knowing it? Again, it seems like something Mystique would have mentioned. Or maybe not. Wanda almost more curious about Lorna than about Lensherr, and not just because Lorna hasn’t been convicted on charges of terrorism. She could email her. But then again, she could _not_ email her, and not risk not getting a response. Keep the fantasy alive just a few days longer. She has precious few illusions these days, this is one she holds onto a little longer.

 

\---

 

Wanda finds, unsurprisingly, almost nothing on the so-called “X-Men” in the books on history and current politics. There are references to rumors, some deduction of who they would be, should they exist in reality, but that’s the sum of it. Because the X-men and mutation in general is much less directly related to Lensherr and Darkholme, and thus less traceable back to them, she dares looking them up in the actual Avengers files. She goes for the paper files first, though. Someone is probably tracking the use of them, too, but it must be harder and take longer. While she’s perfectly comfortable navigating the databases, having done so previously while helping with research for missions she is not yet going on, she has no problem letting them believe that she’s on Avengers business but preferring paper to computers. There aren’t consciously prejudiced against the young woman from the backwards Eastern European country, but there’s the unconscious factor. It bothers her, so she has no qualms over exploiting it.

 

The X-Men, she finds, is a mutant-staffed force operating out of the Salem region of upstate New York (she swallows hard). The exact number of members is unknown, as it appears to shift over time. There have so far been no interaction between the X-Men team and the Avengers or S.H.I.E.L.D, in its day, as X-Men activity seems to have been slowing down in recent year. Indeed, all X-Men activity seems singularly focused on mutant-related activity and there has been no indication of their involvement during the Battles of New York or the Triscelion. The list of known cases of X-Men involvement includes Liberty Island 2002, and the resultant capture of Erik Lensherr, William Strucker’s base in Alberta, Canada in 2004 and the subsequent Blackout, a break-in in Grail Laboratories in 2005, and a handful of rescue actions where mutants have been attacked by hate groups. It’s intriguing. There are also several references to Lensherr in relationship with the Blackout, but no further information is provided, and she makes a mental note to check into those further in the database. Further, there are some blurry pictures of a group of individuals, both men and women, in black uniforms, and a list of known abilities of member of the X-Men team (weather control, teleportation, possibly telepathy, a kind of force blast visible as a red light, and the ability to freeze limited areas and possibly survive extremely cold temperatures.) Considering the comparative level of completeness of other files she has been reviewing - a lot of the data they have has been inherited from S.H.I.E.L.D, who kept a disturbingly close eye on just about everything  - there’s surprisingly little to go on. What’s more interesting, none of this information went public when S.H.I.E.L.D fell. It’s curious, and she should probably figure out what’s up with it, but now’s not the time. There’s just nothing useful on Lensherr, and even less on Darkholme.

She switches gears.

Back at her room, she googles this supposed sister’s full name, as she has interpreted it from the email address - Lorna Dane. She turns out it be right; though there’s not a lot; some articles and papers in geology, plus a lab website that hasn't been updated since 2011, when she was apparently a grad student, a link to a Facebook account that belongs to someone else (one Alex Blanding, probably a former or current lover, judging from the pictures.) The rest of the results are related to a bluegrass band and usually only mentions her in the lineup. That’s all there is, and, frustrated, Wanda gives up and calls it a night. There is still the option of contacting Lorna directly, but she’s still not sure she wants to. First, she’s honestly still not sure she trusts that Mystique has told her the truth. Second, the very thought still makes her nervous. She thought she was without family for a good couple of months, and if Lorna is real, if she really is her sister, Wanda doesn’t want to mess up. Unspoken american social mores are still alien to her, and she can’t trust that she won’t say something wrong and ruin everything.

For two weeks, Wanda continues to ignore the note with the email. Maybe, she tells herself, Mystique has lied and it’s not even a valid address, and even if it is (even if she can check), she doesn’t know what to hope for, who this Lorna person can be. So she does nothing. Every night she sits at the computer, cursor hovering over the “new email” button, ultimately closing the window and going to bed. Then, one Wednesday, there’s a new email when she opens her inbox. This alone is unusual, her private email isn’t signed up to anything, isn’t getting any spam to it (yet) and she isn’t expecting anything.

 

_**Subject** : I hope it is ok that I am sending this _

_**Sender** : Lorna Dane _

_Hi Wanda,_

_I hope you don’t mind me emailing — if R told you the same things she told me, you’ll at least know who I am. Anyway, I’d like to get in touch  - I don’t know any if my biological family - so email me back if that’s ok with you. If not, that’s fine too._

_Oh, and about R, I have a pretty idea of who she is, don’t put too much trust in her. If I am right, that is._

_Best Wishes,_

_Lorna_

 

Wanda only has to consider for a moment, for all the overthinking she has done over the last weeks. She imagines not having had her mother and father, not having had Pietro, and that thought is even worse than the reality of having lost them. She sends a quick reply “Yes, of course. I’d like to get to know you.” She erases it, then types it again, hitting send before she has time to change her mind. Strangely, she realized that what she’s just written is true.

Lorna sends another email, it’s blinking in Wanda’s phone when she wakes up the next morning. In it, she summarizes her life in a few paragraphs, making notes of important things but glossing over long stretches of time; she grew up in a city called Wilmington, in North Carolina, went to college in Pittsburgh and to graduate school in Blacksburg, Virginia, which Wanda has to look up on a map, where she studied geology. She found out she was adopted when she was fourteen; that her mother gave her up at birth. She has always wanted to know why. She has no siblings in her adoptive family. She is engaged to a man called Alex, and plays in a bluegrass band with him. That, at least, goes with what little google-snooping Wanda has done.

But Wanda  doesn’t know what to write back. What is she supposed to say, “my brother and I were orphaned when we were ten, we lived on the streets for a few years before volunteering for medical experimentation that, as it turns out, did absolutely nothing to us, then we almost helped ending the world, and my brother died. Now I am an Avenger”? It’s simultaneously woefully inadequate and entirely overwhelming, and Wanda wouldn’t want to spring that on anyone, least of all a supposed sister she is just barely getting in contact with.

In the end, she contends with keeping it basic - and leaving Pietro out entirely. No part of it feels right, but like with crying, she’s afraid that if she gets started, she’ll never be able to stop.

 

_I actually just recently moved to the US, it must be how R found me. I live in upstate New York now - although I guess R told you that. I grew up in Sokovia, my parents (well, my mother, but dad raised me and I will never be able to think of himself as anything other than my father) died a few years ago._

_Right now I am mostly trying to catch up on what I’ve missed in terms of schooling. When I am not working —_

Does “training to be an Avenger” count as working? Is she being dishonest? She decides to go with it for now, maybe talk to Sam about definitions later - he always listens, partially because he is genuinely kind, partially because he sees it as here Opening Up To Him. Not entirely on purpose, but she can tell. You spend enough time in people’s heads, it turns out, and you won’t need to spend as much time in people’s heads. You learn what thoughts go with what faces, what behavioral tics betray what emotional states.

_When I am not working, I do a lot of reading._

Wanda stares at what she’s written. It reads like a fucking job application. She starts over, tries to refrain from filtering herself.

_I live in upstate New York now, in a building constructed entirely of glass and steel, and while it has been constructed by humans, you can never once tell. I guess I don’t know what I am doing at all, I’ve been cut in half, I’m supposed to be some kind of superhero but I can barely stand up straight some days, I read seventeen books last month because if I stop to think, the silence in my head drowns out everything else._

A small hysterical giggle escapes Wanda as she reads what she’s just written. She erases it and puts the job application back, removing the bit about catching up. She doesn’t want to actively invite pity, and she thinks she’s doing alright, considering.

 

She doesn’t get a response until mid-day the next day, and she and doesn’t dare to check in public for fear of being caught. Which it ridiculous, as she certainly hasn’t broken any rules, but she likes the idea of having something that is just hers. When she does read the email, it’s a quick note asking if she has Skype, if she’d like to talk face to face, as it were. She doesn’t have Skype, the Avengers use proprietary Stark software for video communication, and she hasn’t had the occasion or social circle to branch out, but she can certainly get it and sends a note saying so.

_“Cool. Username is MistressOfMagnetism (don’t laugh, it was my first year in grad school), let me know when you have one?”_

Wanda snorts anyway, curious about the backstory, and goes about setting up an Skype account.

 


	5. Interlude II: Pietro

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He reaches consciousness slowly, only dimly aware of existing at all. For the first fraction of a moment, he knows only absence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a short one, folks, very short. I may even post the next one tomorrow to make up.
> 
> Content warning for: body horror.

He reaches consciousness slowly, only dimly aware of existing at all. For the first fraction of a moment, he knows only absence.  
  
_Wanda_.  
  
The millisecond after, he is aware of pain. Mounting, terrible, all-consuming pain. His back - his entire midsection - is on fire, his arms ache. When he tries to move, he finds he is constrained. He can barely even struggle, and the weak attempts he does make causes everything to, impossibly, hurt even more. He tried to scream, but there is something in his mouth, in his throat, a horrible solid thing. He retches to no avail. The pain is unbearable. The world is starting to go dark around the edges of his vision.  
_Wanda_.  
  
_Wanda terrified, breathing his last   -_ last ? _\- breaths, begging him silently not to go, not to leave her…_  
  
Everything else is obscured by the pain, his head is swimming, the darkness is closing in.  
  
_Wanda_.  
  
The last thing he can think about before losing consciousness again is her face.


	6. There's Sadness In The Family, Dad Told Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few of the designs catch her eye because they remind her of the designs she’s seen on sokov punks, in that they’re small and monochrome. There are a series of symbols, and her fingers keep running over the symbol for Mercury, a stylized caduceus formed by circle with a half-circle on top and a cross below. Quicksilver. She makes up her mind in an instant. He would’ve been proud of that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On we go. Title from Hello Saferide's Dad Told Me.
> 
> Something is about to happen, something important, but before it does, Magneto's daughters hang out and share some memories.
> 
> \--  
> Hey guys, I updated the chapter count after editing chapter 7, because I realized it ended up nearly double the length of the other chapters. The story as a whole is still finished, I am just editing as I go. Chapter 7 coming on Wednesday.

Wanda settles in and signs up for Skype right away, pondering for a moment over a username. She doesn’t want to use her real name, only too aware that it will soon be public knowledge. She’s not really keen on getting an avalanche of messages from the general public. At first, she types in _Wandika_ , but can’t bring herself to hit enter, can’t imagine herself being able to see it show up on the screen every time she signs in.

Only her family ever called her Wandika, and then only Pietro. Now, no one even knows about any pet name. In fact, Sam asked her just a few days ago if she had any nicknames, any at all. She had shrugged and said no. Let him believe it just wasn’t a custom she was used to, although in retrospect, that was unfair to Sam. He wasn’t really as ignorant and arrogant as she has first thought, none of them were. Well, maybe Stark, but he wasn’t really a part of the team she has joined, which was honestly how she was even there to begin with.

Either way, her lack of an obvious nickname makes her present situation inconvenient. She bites her lip, tries hard to remember all the nonsense Stark spouted that evening in the old Avengers Tower, before they went back to Sokovia, before the end. He’d referred to Pietro as “the quicksilver kid”… but her? Pietro would have remembered, their focus had always been on each other. Ah. “The little scarlet witch”. Which was unwieldy as far as names go, but encouraged by the silliness of Lorna’s own screen name, she types in _ScarletWitch_ , types a password, and hits enter.

Before her courage runs out, she types up a quick email for Lorna, then sits down and waits. She’s good at waiting, she’s spent most of her life waiting, but she’s getting rapidly worse at it. As if all the feelings, all the habits and ideas and everything that made her and Pietro distinct have pooled in Wanda, and she’s tapping her foot against the floor as the seconds go by.

 

After a few minute a call pops up on her screen, and fingers trembling, she accepts.

Lorna looks a little like them, Wanda thinks. She’s older, and her chin shape and eyes seem unfamiliar, but her eyebrows and nose look quite a bit like Wanda’s - she can’t quite make out which in the low quality image. She has medium brown hair to her shoulders, wearing a black sweater and she is holding her hand up a small wave.

“Hi! I’m Lorna.”

Wanda waves back and Lorna smiled an odd little smile.

“It’s nice to talk you face to face… weird, but nice. I… just. Just let me do this ramble once and then I promise I’ll shut up after, ok?”  She’s talking at a mile a minute and Wanda barely has time to nod before she continues. “Ok! So. Like I said, I don’t know anything about my mom, I still don’t, I only know she gave me up. And my boyfriend, well, he’s fiancé now, he was never interested in his bio family, but I was, so when _she_ came to talk to me… I don’t know how I feel about _him_ , but I’ve never had a sister and please please please forgive me for being this rambly, I really shouldn’t have had that second glass of wine, I am so sorry, it’s just. I don’t trust them, but I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if I didn’t at least try to figure out, you know, who you are. Whew. That was it. Done with that.”

To be honest, Wanda doesn’t entirely know how to respond to this apparently somewhat inebriated onslaught of words. But she smiles. No one will be able to say that she hasn’t tried.

“I don’t know if I trust her either. But  lot of what she said about me, about my family, it makes sense.”

“And you’re a mutant? Sorry, was that blunt?”

Wanda smiles again.

“Blunt is good, sometimes. And yes, apparently I am. Thought I didn’t know until she told me. I thought what I could do was the consequence of… something else. Not entirely pleasant, sorry.”

“No no, no worries.” Lorna waves her hand vaguely “Can I ask what you can do? Your mutant… thing, I mean, not your job.”

Wanda holds up her hands, summons just a little bit of energy, enough to produce a small, softly glowing orb, then lets it go.

“That, and some telepathy, I guess. It’s a little more restricted.”

“Nice! I have… very limited control of magnetic fields.” Wanda raises an eyebrow, and Lorna smiles in response.

“I know, I know! I didn’t tell anyone for a long time, just because of that, I should have know that it’s a dead giveaway. It’s not that strong, though I shorted a few computers before I figured it. It was why I did a lot of my master’s stuff, magnetism, trying to figure out the theoretical side of it. And then I just… switched gears for a bit.”

 

They very deliberately avoid the subject of Sokovia, much to Wanda’s relief. Lorna must have understood that it isn’t something she want to talk about, and she can’t figure out how to say anything at all about it without bringing Pietro into the story. The problem with someone being at the center of your life is that when they’re gone, none of it makes any sense anymore. But they talk. Wanda talks about the books she’s been reading, and about trying to study up on Homo mutatis, about reassessing herself. Lorna talks about her job as a geology post-doc, about the San Andreas fault, about being adopted.

“I found out when I was fourteen. I’d been suspecting it for a while, and one weekend when mom and dad were out at a party I dug through dad’s entire office until I found my birth certificate and all the adoption papers. I cried all evening. I was wondering how someone could just give their own baby up. Back then, I thought it was because of my mutation. It wasn’t obvious until I hit puberty, but man was I ever self-conscious about it when I was fourteen. Now, I don’t know what to believe.”

“You think it had to do with _him_? And anyway, how was it obvious?” She can, after all, only see Lorna’s head and torso on the screen. She could very well be sporting a tail or lizard legs and Wanda would be none the wiser.

“This,” says Lorna, pointing towards her hair “is hair dye. This shit grows in green.”

Wanda grins. “Very punk rock.”

“Oh, and so was I,” she shakes her head ruefully. “For years and years. I did the sound for Alex’ bluegrass band, but I would never ever play in it.” She laughs a little, almost to herself. “Then the guy who played keyboard moved to California for a job, so here I am, bluegrass keyboardist. Don’t tell twenty-year-old me, though, she’d never forgive me. But I enjoy it.” Then she looks serious. “About him, though. Yeah, I don’t know. It could be a simple issue of prejudice, but if she knew anything about his politics… I mean, I’m not even sure how radical he was at the time.”

They continue this pattern of referring to Raven as _she_ , to Erik Lensherr as _him_. It keeps them somewhat safe, technically, although she isn’t entirely sure how secure any connection she makes out of the NAF is, and emotionally; it’s oddly comforting, sharing knowledge so obvious that it only has to be referred to in the vaguest of terms. But they agree that as much as they’d like theirs claims of sisterhood to be true, it’s worth testing.

“Fortunately,” says Lorna, “I happen to know a geneticist who can look into it for us, and not only that, but I am going to your neck of the woods in October. It’s my brother-in-law’s birthday, and we’re taking the opportunity to visit do some wedding planning. Which, before I forget, June 22nd next year, Wilmington, you’re invited. “

Wanda isn’t entirely sure that this wedding is a place she wants to be at, or that anyone but Lorna wants her there, but she doesn’t think this is the time to discuss that. It can wait.

“Oh. Where’s your brother-in-law?”

“Westchester, near Salem, so not far. But we’re probably staying in the city. It is not Alex’s favorite thing, but I have every intention of hitting some overproduced Broadway musicals, and I want to have a drink and crash afterwards, not deal with traffic.”

Wanda knows where Salem is, has traveled south enough to be aware of most of geography between the Avengers compound and New York City. Still, the proximity is awfully convenient, and although she has no hostile feelings towards Lorna, she still does’t trust Mystique. She needs to learn more about her and about Erik Lensherr.

This is what she thinks about after they’ve signed off and said good night. It’s enough to keep her exhausted body awake for quite a while after she’s turned out the light. The next morning, once she is done with breakfast, she heads over to the library again.

 

In September, it’s their birthday.

Her birthday. Their birthday. Wanda is the only one to turn twenty, but it is, it will always be, their birthday. If she lives to be a hundred years old (the thought scares her), it will be their birthday.

No one says anything. She knows that at least Steve and Natasha are aware of it, has her personnel files and profile and what-not. Probably Sam too. Rhodey probably doesn’t, and who knows what Vision knows or cares about human anniversaries. Perhaps he understands entirely, and that is why he leaves her blissfully alone all day. Perhaps he’s just busy elsewhere. Wanda makes even more of an effort to not look too far into what people are thinking, these days. She can’t quite handle the pity.

All day, while she’s furiously biting back tears at breakfast, in the gym, in the library, in the training room in the afternoon, she’s wondering why she’s so angry. She’s been mostly numb, mostly focused on the terrifying void inside her, the edges of a still-fresh wound. But today she’s silently overflowing with anger, and she doesn’t get _why_. She has known that there’s no such thing as fair since she was ten years old, and has only relearned that lesson over and over though the years. No, it isn’t fair that Pietro doesn’t get to celebrate his twentieth birthday, but what the fuck in the world is?

She’s reading the same page for the third time over when it strikes her that she’s angry at Vision, angry at herself, angry for being alive when Pietro is not. It’s not that she wants to die, it’s far too late for that now, but she’s acutely furious that she wasn’t allowed to fall with the city back then, have her body be shattered along with her soul. Melodramatic, undoubtedly, but it suits her today. What right does she have to be here, sleeping in a soft - empty, so empty - bed, eating several steady meals per day, training, having goals (supposedly having goals. Having goals when they ask her) when the person who has been beside her from the day she was born is gone, gone, his body decomposing in the ground? No part of it is bearable. They were supposed to be together. And she’s angry at Pietro for being heroic, for expecting her to be able to go on without him. Somewhat surprised, she finds herself almost as angry as before for the first time since his death.

She climbs up on the roof, sits there silently with her arms wrapped around her knees, twenty years old and every cell of her body furious over it. The gym might have been the more obvious destination, but no one else seems to be in, and much as she’d like to, she can’t be like Steve and take her anger out on innocent boxing bags. It just won’t clear her head.

 

And yet the days go on. They go on and on and Lorna comes to New York at the end of October, just before Halloween, when all of houses in the little towns are decorated with pumpkins, ghosts, and orange. They have decided to meet in the city; Lorna has a laundry list of things she wants to have time for, but insists Wanda picks at least an activity or two. To be honest, Wanda wouldn’t mind just tagging along, but decides that she’d like them to meet for coffee in a cafe she’s been frequenting fairly regularly over the last few months. The coffee itself is good, the staff aren’t overly talkative, and they serve some food instead of just sweets. Conveniently, it allows them to meet up for lunch. Wanda gets there first; she orders a cup and slice of quiche and sits down in an armchair with her book. Lorna sends a text that she is running late, but arrives about ten minutes later, already carrying some shopping bags. She recognizes Wanda immediately and walks up to her; they hug awkwardly, barely at all, but that isn’t what makes Wanda feel like she’s had the air knocked out of her.

It wasn’t immediately obvious in the small Skype window, but in real life, the similarities between Lorna and Pietro are striking. The depth and shape of their eyes, the lines of their nose, it’s all there, these supposedly Lensherr traits. Pietro had mother’s hair, though, although no one but Wanda could tell anymore. She knows that she and Pietro, while twins, were not that visibly similar, at least once they hit puberty; it was their behavior and body language that betrayed them. But Lorna. Lorna looks like somehow like the missing link between them, though a decade older. It’s heartbreaking.

 

They sit down, and the conversation moves as awkwardly as their first Skype conversation, after “this is a nice place” and “I really enjoy that they have more than cookies” in addition to Lorna’s mournful confession that she and Alex are staying in Westchester after all,  they sit in silence for a minute.

“It’s weird,” says Lorna then, “to see you in real life” and Wanda nods. She’s never been shy, but she and Pietro never really needed friends, even before the bombings, they always had each other. Reaching out to someone like this is odd. But Lorna is so pleasant, so seemingly effortlessly putting her at ease. “And I’m sorry if this is weird, but it’s somehow relieving to find that we have the same eyebrows.”

Wanda shakes her head, though a little unnerved how similar, yet different, the patterns of their thoughts are. Perhaps it’s only natural, given the circumstances.

“It’s not weird at all. I don’t trust _her_. I don’t like taking her for her word.”

“It used to be something I thought about a lot,” continues Lorna after a pause, “being able to recognize myself in people. When I found out I was adopted, I spent hours cataloging all my friends, how they had their mother’s smile or the same eyes as their sister. And I always wondered what it would be like…” she trails off, concentrates on her cup of tea.

This is something Wanda can’t relate to. She can feel it, this intense longing to be part of something, radiating off of Lorna. She can sympathize, absolutely. But she never had wonder where she belonged, she always had her second half right by side. _But he’s gone now,_ she reminds herself. She should want to belong in other circumstances; with the Avengers, and here, with Lorna.

“It’s good to feel like you’re a part of something,” she says instead.

“I’m just glad I didn’t know about this when I was younger, honestly. If I found about this ten, fifteen years ago, Jesus. Who knows what kind of dumb shit I would have gotten myself into.”

Wanda bites her lip. Would they have been better off? They wouldn’t have starved, wouldn’t have had to volunteer with HYDRA, possibly _manifested_ , though she can’t quite own the word yet, under more pleasant circumstances. Pietro might have been alive. Yet, she’s read about Lensherr’s ideologies. Her powers might very well have been causing just as much harm, just for another cause. And given how keen Mystique’s thoughts, if not her actions, have been on finding ways to manipulate Wanda, fighting the mutant fight would probably have been something they’d been roped into young. Not a safe place to be, either.

“Jesus, I’m sorry,” Lorna starts, misinterpreting Wanda’s sudden silence. “I know you lost your parents, I just didn’t think—“

Again, Wanda waves off her concerns. “No, I agree. I’m not gonna lie, things were pretty … shitty for a long while, but I think if I had been brought up by him, I would have been a pawn. This way, at least, I am my own woman.”

Is she, though? Isn’t she running the Avengers’ errands the same way she ran HYDRA’s? Ran Ultron’s? But it’s all she can do to keep herself busy these days, and somehow, she has to atone for the damage she’s done, no matter how well-intentioned.

They chat over lunch, and the conversation runs easier and smoother than any of them expected. There’s still a whole bunch of subjects that are verboten, but they manage on superficial topics and veer into politics with surprisingly little friction. Their views don’t differ much, although Lorna has never been to a May Day rally, and giggles at the thought.

 

Later, Lorna has a tattoo appointment, and Wanda decides to come along. The studio is all the way over on Broadway, so they take the subway and only walk the last bit. Lorna is having work done a bigger piece on her back, so she’s out in the main room. It’s different from how Wanda would have expected it, a large white room with wooden floors and soft armchairs in the waiting area.

She is a little surprised when Lorna introduces her to the tattoo artist, Rachel, as her sister. Not unpleasantly; it simply wasn’t something she saw coming, this sudden, easygoing intimacy. It’s an American interaction pattern she’s finding it hard to adapt to. Rachel and Lorna were apparently roommates in college, before Rachel’s career change and subsequent move to NYC.

She finds all of this out as they make small talk while Rachel is prepping her machine. It’s all very… pleasant. The only tattooing Wanda has seen before was in the streets in Novi Grad, with flame-sterilized pins and sooth. It was a mark of passage, mostly among the boys, and the designs were never very elaborate. Lorna’s back, though, has an intricate vine design, and Rachel is just now beginning to fill it in with green. Lorna explained on the way way over that the tattoo has been done in parts; separate appointments for the outlines and shading, and then for the color. She already have other designs on her arm and thigh, but those were smaller, one-sitting tattoos.

“Does it hurt?” Wanda asks, a little curious after all.

“Yes and no, I guess? It doesn’t feel like needles, more like a really warm sensation. When it does hurt, it more burns than stings.”

When Rachel declares them done for the session, there’s fifteen minutes to go on the appointment. She doesn’t want to cover a too-large area at any one time, she says, and Lorna already has an appointment booked for her last session.

“So unless little sis has gotten attached to any of those and wants to use up your last fifteen, you’re good to go,” Rachel says, as she finished the dressing over Lorna’s back. Wanda has spent the last few minutes leafing through one of the booklets. A few of the designs caught her eye because they reminded her more of the designs she’s seen on sokov punks, in that they’re small and monochrome. There are a series of symbols, and her fingers keep running over the symbol for Mercury, a stylized caduceus formed by circle with a half-circle on top and a cross below. Quicksilver. She makes up her mind in an instant. He would’ve been proud of that.

It feels appropriate, somehow, and less gauche than a name or image. She likes to have it be almost a secret. In that vein, she asks for it to be placed on the inside of her wrist. Rachel has her set up and started in no time, apparently foregoing the ordinary procedure with pre-made appointments and pre-payments because she design is so small and Lorna a reliable customer and personal friend. Briefly, Wanda is nervous, but then she scolds herself; if she can willingly let herself be strapped to gurneys, face first the Avengers and then Ultron, then a small needle can’t possibly pose a threat. And Lorna is right, it doesn’t hurt exactly, though it’s not by any means comfortable, and it’s over surprisingly fast. The tattoo cleaned and covered up in another few minutes, and they pay (Wanda insists on paying in full despite talk of a discount for friends. Perhaps superstitiously, she feels that for the tattoo to be a proper tribute to Pietro, it has to be done according to the rules.)

 

“So Lor invited you to her gig tomorrow night?” asks Rachel, and Wanda shakes her head without thinking it through, only belatedly realizes what Rachel asked. Her heart sinks a little. There’s a concert and she isn’t invited? She was thinking they were getting along well, but she must have been wrong. Lorna blushes a little, and shakes her head as well.

“It’s just a little thing at a bar. There’s not going to be a proper audience of anything. You don’t have to come, it’s not going to be anything to write home about.”

“I’d like to come. I mean, if you don’t mind.”

“I… sure, I guess? I’d like you to, but only if you really want to. I’m not joking about it not being a proper gig, just me and my piano and less than half an hour of stage time. Still. It could be fun, I guess. For someone not trying to break into music professionally, I’d like to think I’m doing alright.”

Wanda decided she wants to go, even if means another long train ride down tomorrow night. They say goodbye at the subway stop, where she heads back to Grand Central. The bandaged inside of her wrist is a little tender, her soul more so. She has commemorated her brother and she seems to have gained a sister. She’s no less half, but it feels like an important step, somehow.

 

\---

 

The following night, Wanda is sitting in a couch, a glass of wine in her hand as she’s waiting for Lorna’s gig to begin. She does have a guilty conscience over tricking the bartender, but she desperately needs something to calm her nerves. It’s a little easier like this, with Lorna up - well, barely, it’s a small venue - on the stage, behind her keyboard, her makeup done and hair up. She looks more like her own person, less like Someone With Too Much Of Pietro’s Face For Comfort. A guy walks in and sits down in one of the other couches; Wanda can tell from both pictures and brief glances into Lorna’s mind that he’s Alex. He’s tall, blond, with fine, sharp features but without looking girlishly pretty. He also looks simultaneously comfortable and out of place; like he certainly knows his way around a bar, but maybe not this bar. Which may very well be true, from what Lorna has told her, he’s not exactly a city boy.

One of the bartenders enters the stage to introduce Lorna, and the room quiets down minutely. The first song is something about a hangover; cute, clever, but maybe forgettable. The second, song, however, is something else. It’s much slower, hesitant, about family secrets and regretting what you know. Moreover, it’s about being alone and wanting to be connected to other people, and it makes Wanda feel like it’s somehow about her, too. And it’s sad, sure, but it isn’t until she feels something wet hit her hand that she realized that she’s crying. She doesn’t do much better from there on. She listens to the music, and it’s good, though she isn’t much of a music connoisseur, never has been. But there’s something above the notes, or maybe below them, behind them. A melancholy thread, something sad turned beautiful. It breaks something in her, something she has held back carefully, maintained, reigned in. She doesn’t know exactly what it is, she just know she can’t stop crying now that she’s started.

As promised, it’s not a long show, and afterwards, the noise quickly builds up again. After a quick chat with the sound guy, Lorna strolls back into the bar area, open beer in hand. Wanda doesn’t have time to sneak off to the bathroom, and tries to wipe away her tears as best she can, although she’s probably still a mess, with mascara and eyeshadow down her cheeks. Possibly down her chin. At first, she thinks she might have been successful, but the moment Lorna lays her eyes on her, she can tell she was mistaken. A worried look on her face, Lorna sits down next to her.

“Hey, there. I know I’m not the best singer in town, but I hope it wasn’t that bad.”  
Wanda almost snorts through tears.  
“There’s just…. there are some things I haven’t told you about. About me, I mean.”  
“Hon, there are like five things you have told me about in total, so yeah, I kind of gathered.”  
Wanda sniffles. She feels ridiculous, but also relieved that Lorna isn’t angry or embarrassed. Quite the opposite, she seems honestly concerned. She conjures a packet of tissues out of her purse and hands Wanda a few.  
“Would you like to tell, me, or do you just need some time?”  
Wanda is quiet for a moment. She doesn’t _want_ to tell Lorna, doesn’t know if she really wants to tell anyone, as if talking about it makes everything so much more final. But she will have to at some point, might as well be now. She takes a deep breath.

“I have  - _shit_ , I had. I had a brother.”  
“Wanda.” Lorna has gone very still, understanding the implications of the past tense. She takes Wanda’s hand. “I’m so sorry.”  
They sit like that for a while, quietly, not moving.  
“I realized something was wrong, I guess I just thought it was the whole culture chock business, or about _them_. Would you like to tell me about him?”  
Wanda nods, but she can’t think of anything to say. There’s too much to say, how do you even start to talk about the only thing that ever meant anything to you?  
“Was he your older brother?” Lorna is just trying to be helpful, but oh. _Oh_. Of course. Wanda is an idiot. Lorna has only understood half of it, because unlike Wanda, she can’t read minds, unlike Wanda she doesn’t have all twenty years of backstory living in her brain every waking minute, she doesn’t know the whole of it. She doesn’t understand her own role in it.

“Well,” she starts, “technically he was. By twelve minutes. So I guess… I guess what I should have said is that we had a brother.”  
“You were twins.”  
She nods again, blinking away new tears.  
“We were… we were all we had, for years. After the bombings when mom and dad died. We looked after each other. I never thought.. I never thought that I’d have to be on my own.”  
“What was his name?”  
“Pietro.”  
“Pietro.” Lorna says his name slowly, carefully, like she’s tasting it, trying it out. Fifteen minutes ago she was behind a piano, singing a song about longing to belong, to have a family, and now she has a brother out of the blue. A dead brother, even. Suddenly Wanda thinks she should be the one doing the comforting, but she also needs to tell the complete story, he deserves to have it told.

“They were almost done evacuating the city,” she starts, trusting Lorna to know the rest of the details, and it looks like she catches on. “But there was a child, a little boy, who had been left behind, and shooting. Pietro, he… he stepped in between. The boy survived, but Pietro didn’t.”  
She doesn’t bother with the details; this is what matters, this is the core of it. Pietro chose to die so that others might live. That is his legacy, insufficient as it turned out to be in the big picture.

It’s Lorna’s turn to take a deep breath. She leans back in the couch, Wanda’s hand still in hers.  
“So I had a brother. Who died six months ago.” Her eyes are shiny too, now.  
“Seven months, eleven days, “ Wanda glances at her watch, “nineteen hours.”  
“Jesus,” Lorna repeats.  
“Sorry.”  
“No, no, not you.” She squeezer Wanda’s hand. It’s curiously comforting, in the middle of all the emotional commotion. “It’s just… a lot of information to process. This must be terrible for you.”  
“This, now? I’ve had worse. I’m just… I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about him. It’s hard to talk about, to put into words.”  
“I feel really shitty, I was irritated at you for not telling me more. I mean, I thought you had your reasons, but I couldn’t begin to understand.”     
“There was almost nothing I could tell you that Pietro wasn’t part of. He was…” words fail her again. There’s only so many times you can repeat the word ‘ _everything_ ’ before it loses its meaning. “It’s hard to explain.” Then she has an idea. “I could show you.”

Lorna nods, surprisingly quickly. Others have been less eager to let Wanda inside their head, but everyone else she’s talked to for the last… years, really, have been very different from Lorna. And other than Pietro, none have been family.

So she sits up in the couch, moves her hand up to Lorna’s face and concentrates on bringing the vision slowly. The version of her memories that she sends is heavily edited, removing all of her conflicted emotions, much of the bloodshed, and for completely selfish reasons, everything about Banner in Johannesburg. But she shows Lorna snippets of living on the streets, the rallies, HYDRA’s offer. She shows, briefly, the radiation room and her own first feeble attempt at TK. She shows their seething anger. She shows Strucker and the Avengers, Ultron and finally, she shows the loss of Pietro and her new life in the US, although there are bits of that she leaves out there too, for security reasons if nothing else. What Lorna doesn’t know can’t be used against her.

 

When she’d done, she sits back and watches Lorna, who is breathing quickly, her mouth partially open in surprise.  
“Wow,” Lorna says finally. “That’s quite something.”

Wanda almost regrets what she’s done. She wants desperately for someone to understand Pietro, know him as she knew him, but perhaps this was going too far. Perhaps she told too much, too soon, and now Lorna will hate her for what she did, for the damaged she has done, even though the story was told with omissions. She has counted on Lorna’s desire for a family to play into her hands, but maybe the odds were a little too high. Lorna doesn’t leave, though, she stays on the couch, looking very thoughtful. Then she takes Wanda’s hand in hers again.

“You carry a lot of shit, don’t you, little sister?” There are tears in her eyes now, and Wanda knows she’s tearing up again as well. Lorna opens her arms and they hug properly, for the first time, both crying. It’s been months since Wanda has touched another human for more than a second or two, other than during medical exams and training sessions. She hasn’t realized how starved she is of touch, how much of a relief it is. They cling to each other for another full minute, until Wanda notices that Alex has come back, and is watching them awkwardly. She reluctantly lets go of Lorna and wipes her eyes.

“Alex, this is Wanda, I told you about her. Wanda, Alex.”

Wanda is still a little bit too much of a mess to offer Alex her hand to shake, but she nods in greeting. He nods back.

 “Alex was adopted too,” Lorna tells her.  Wanda doesn’t bother reminding her that she’s already mentioned that. “We only met his brother a few years ago.”

Alex honestly looks more than a little uncomfortable, and Wanda isn’t sure if it’s due to Lorna disclosing personal information of because they're both still crying and doesn’t even know why. Almost as if on cue, it’s obvious they know each other well, Lorna explains, as briefly as is possible.

“We had a brother. He died not too long ago.”

“I’m sorry,” Alex says, to both of them. He immediately looks much less stand-offish. Lorna takes his hand and Wanda nods for what feels like the hundredth time, still not sure if her voice would hold, should she try to respond. She feels empty, hollowed out, as if the emotional outburst cleaned her of something. Or perhaps it was just telling someone their story. She thinks about confession, about how maybe that’s why people attend it. To let go of their stories, hand them over to someone else.

“Hey,” says Lorna. “How about we give you a ride back home? We’re heading upstate anyway.”  
“No, you don’t have to. I’m fine, really.” She’s very well aware she isn’t looking very fine at all, her mascara still all over her cheeks and her eyes swollen.  
“Well, I’m not. Between this and being onstage, I am entirely pooped.” She looks at Alex and smiles weakly. “I demand mister Blanding drives me home right now.”  
“Alright,” says Alex. “And we’ll drop you off as well, Wanda, no use arguing. Why don’t you guys wait here, I am parked” he gestures vaguely, “way the hell over here. I’ll text when I’m close and we can meet outside.”

Then he takes off and Wanda and Lorna are alone on the couch again.

“I am sorry, really, if that was too much information at once,” Wanda starts, but Lorna dismisses her with with a wave of her hand.  
“I’m glad I know. And, before I forget: I don’t think there’s any doubt that we are related now, but I am still not sure I trust _him_. So,” she produces a small jar with a cotton swab in it from her purse. There’s a label on the jar, where someone has written “Wanda” in black sharpie. “My friend the geneticist tells me all you need to do is swab the inside of your cheek, but the cotton swab back in the jar, and close it tight. She already has mine,” she adds.  
Wanda hesitates for all of a second. But, she reasons, as reluctant she is to give away genetic material, it’s really the lead she can do after what Lorna has done for her tonight. Besides, she is still curious, and it would be convenient to have answers in another form than Mystique’s hypotheses, in actual, hard numbers. So she swabs her cheek and closes the jar, and Lorna puts its back in her purse. Then a thought occurs to her.  
“Wait, won’t they need _his_ information as well?”  
“Ah, that is apparently already taken care of, a long time ago. I made sure not to ask questions.”  
That could mean any number of things, but she chooses to accept it at face value. Then she remembers, rummages through her phone. She doesn’t have a lot of photos, so it takes almost no time to find it. It’s the picture of her and Pietro on the way to Johannesburg. Lorna looks at it intently in the dim light.

“I look like both of you. Or we look like each other, I guess.” Wanda nods, almost  teary-eyed again. It’s an odd and mysterious bond to have, and she hasn’t considered it before, only taken it for granted. She thinks she likes having it, still.

 

When Alex texts they head out, climbs into the car and starts the drive upstate. Wanda asks them to drop her off at the crossroads before the main entrance; she only has a minute’s walk back home. Then she says goodbye, making sure to thank Alex again for giving her a ride, and makes her way home. Without having spent a single minute at the gym, she falls asleep almost the minute her head hits the pillow.


	7. The Woman in the Silver Jaguar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Which is how she finds herself standing in a dark cemetery, at eleven at night, with a very nervous-looking sister and two internationally wanted terrorists, one of them in the most ridiculous helmet known to man. There’s a guard on patrol at night , but he has a lot of area to cover, and Wanda has made sure that he’s not going to be anywhere near them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, apologize for the change in chapter count; I was editing and realized that chapter 7 was twice the length of chapter 1 and 2. So I split it, this is the first of the two parts. The story is still finished, just reorganized a bit.
> 
> I apologize for any typos, and will probably need to make some fixes tomorrow.

Lorna calls her that a Thursday afternoon in late November, which is unusual enough; they normally converse via email and Skype.

“She called me,” Lorna says, her voice urgent, breathless, once Wanda answers, and Wanda is happy she’s in her apartment and not in the common room or gym. “She says that it’s an emergency and that she needs to see us. I was already on my way up, so I figured why not. I have another thing for you as well.”

Wanda can see a dozen reasons _why not_ , but Lorna sounds so worried, possibly mirroring Mystique’s mood (does Mystique have moods, other than “displeased” and “generally irritated”? Wanda isn’t sure.)

“Did she says why?”

“Nope, not on the phone. Just that it was a matter of some urgency, and to call back when we can be there.

Wanda only hesitates for second. She’s doesn’t trust Mystique, but it’s clear that Lorna is going with or without her, and Wanda is the one with stronger offensive powers, should it come down to that. “I’m not really busy, so I guess I can come. When will you be in New York?”

“I’m already waiting for my luggage at JFK. I’ll need to stop by Westchester before I meet you. Ten?”

“Pick me up? I can say I am going for a run if anyone asks.”

They hang up, and at nine forty-five, Wanda changes into running gear and laces her shoes. The weather is looking unpleasant, but at least it’s not snowing yet. She brings an extra sweatshirt; once she is not running, it’s going to be cold. As she leaves, she texts Lorna her location,  then leaves the phone on a table in her apartment, and just a minute before ten, Lorna’s car stops on the main road and Wanda climbs in. They drive almost all the way into town before Lorna pulls over and takes a manilla folder out of her bag.

“This”, she says, “is for you.” It contains only one sheet of paper, titled “DNA test report.” It has two columns of code-like, scientific lingo Wanda doesn’t really understand, though it appears to be a listing of genetic markers.

“Look below,” says Lorna. And below is a few short sentences. _Probability of paternity: 99.99%_. Alright, then.

“Yours?” she asks Lorna, who nods.

“Yours?” Wanda nods back.

“Well,” says Lorna, then. “Now we know.”

 

They look at each other. They’ve known this for a while, yes, but there’s something else entirely to have it committed to paper. This is their connection. This is their inheritance. The question is what they are going to do with it.

“I guess,” Wanda thinks aloud, “that this settles the question of whether I am a mutant as well.”

“You had doubts?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know. People have been telling me all these different things for years. It is hard to know what to believe.” She doesn’t say that she and Pietro didn’t believe in anyone but each other for the longest time. She doesn’t have to. Lorna knows, she’s seen it.

Then Lorna’s phone beeps. She checks it. “It’s Mystique,” she says, less concerned with which names to use when they are alone. “She just sent me an address a few miles south. You up for this?”

Wanda takes another deep breath.

“Yes,” she responds. “Yes I am.”

They meet Mystique by a football field, unoccupied for the night but still brightly lit. She’s in her tall, blonde shape again, and instructs them to switch to her car; an almost preposterously luxurious silver Jaguar. It seems an odd choice of a vehicle for someone who should be attempting to keep a low profile. Lorna hesitates, and Wanda give her a comforting smile. She’s not afraid. She’s an Avenger, she has destroyed an army of robots, she has torn vibranium apart with the force of her will, and from Mystique’s posture, pace of speech, she can tell that something is happening, something significant. It isn’t just Mystique’s thinly veiled impatience, it’s something about how the air smells. Something very important is in the balance.

Fortunately, it’s not a long drive. Mystique drives in silence, and parks the car in a lot that is almost entirely empty; a truck that looks like it belongs in the construction site across the street is the only other vehicle in sight. They leave the car and Raven leads them to a warehouse, which looks mostly empty. Lorna is starting to seem extremely apprehensive, fiddling with her jacket zipper, clenching and unclenching her fists, and Wanda makes a point to position herself between her sister and the dark of the building. Then the lights turn on. Or, well, light is a relative term; there are naked bulbs along the ceiling beams, barely bright enough to light the building on the floor level. They follow Raven up a set of stairs, and then, there he is.

Erik.

Her father, or so the paperwork says.

He looks quite a bit like in the newspaper clipping, although he’s a whole decade older; he’s tall, wearing what looks like a gray suit; nothing fancy, but definitely expensive. And a ridiculous helmet. It seems to block her from seeing his thoughts; she can absolutely tell that he’s there, but nothing comes through. She tries to decide what she feels about seeing him in the flesh, and finds that she’s not entirely sure. On the one hand, she’s grown curious enough over the months, want to know what he’s really like. On the other, she’s resentful that it isn’t until now that he makes himself known; why waste so much time sending Mystique as a go-between? But… she realizes that what she told Mystique back in spring is true: she had a father. The man in front of her is just an old man who so far has done very little for her, and she feels very little for him.

“You’re very trusting, coming here” he says, by way of hello.

“No, I’m really not.” It comes out a lot more tired than she intended it, but it’s still true.

He doesn’t respond immediately, merely lifts an eyebrow quizzically, as if expecting her to elaborate.

“I’d say I’m about equal parts curious and confident. Maybe a little higher on the confidence side.”

And with that, Wanda summons her TK and knocks the helmet off his head. She only gets a quick glance at his mind; she doesn’t bother holding onto the helmet, doesn’t think she can win in a direct struggle and doesn’t want to put her weaknesses on display just yet. Still, she’s able to see that he doesn’t have any directly ill intentions by bringing them here, but he is wary. Less of her, more of Lorna, which is mildly confusing. She doesn’t have time to figure out why.

“I’m impressed,” he responds, calmly, once the helmet is bak on his head. It sounds sincere, and she supposes she should count that as a win. But she doesn’t like being evaluated like this, and the weight of the night, Pietro’s transferred impatience, are beginning to simmer.

Erik points to some chairs along the wall, gestures to them to sit down as he does so himself. Mystique remains standing. They sit there, in silence, him watching them for a minute until Wanda loses her patience.

“Look, I have people expecting me back any moment, so if we could hurry…”

“My dear, I assure you that you have nothing to fear from—“

“No, no. I’m serious. I’m not supposed be here. The best thing I could think of on a short notice was going on a run. I should be home by now, and you said this was an emergency, so if we could get on with this and I can either be back  - or far away  - soon, I would very much like to avoid a bunch if worried Avengers coming to look for me.”

Erik nods again. “Very well. Mystique, if you could hand me the files. And do let Wanda know what you found.” Lorna isn’t mentioned, which is interesting on its own. There’s something more than just a meet-and-greet going on here, but what?

Mystique, who has merged into the blue-skinned, yellow-eyed shape she had in the photo in the history book, seats herself on the edge of the desk and turns to Wanda.

“Well, as I told you when we first met, I have been researching you. HYDRA had no shortage of information about you, both before and after your little procedure. I could tell you more about you than you know yourself. The amount of trust you put on these people…”

Lorna looks uncomfortable, but Wanda is mainly irritated. For all of Mystique’s supposed hurry, they’re taking an awfully long time.

“There’s wasn’t much of choice, at the time. We were living in the streets, they offered us power. And food, that helped. Anyway, can we move on?”

“They were delighted to have you, you know. Twins. So special, so full of anger. So useful.” She’s winding Wanda up on purpose, and Erik is mainly looking curious, as if he’s waiting to see how she’ll handle herself.

“I know. I am aware. I had to listen to that bullshit. Now, _your point_?”

“My point, Wanda, is that the second time I checked back, the body of data had grown, significantly. Not yours, they had no updates on you since March. But your brother… There were terabytes of test results, analyses, gene mappings that hadn’t been there the week before. So I checked back again a week later. The same thing, drastically increased amounts data. Obviously, it’s entirely possible that they were consolidating information from multiple storage locations, but it grew less and less likely…”

 

Wanda has an idea where this is going, a strange feeling beginning to stir in her chest, trying desperately to break free but not entirely daring to. She needs confirmation. Lorna’s face is closed now, serious. She is wary of Mystique, and without the emotional pull anything having to do with Pietro has on Wanda, more suspicious.

“What are you trying to say?” Wanda finds herself standing, but doesn’t remember standing up.

“I am telling you that you have reason to believe that that grave you keep visiting is empty.”

“I saw them carry him away. I saw the coffin, there were people I trust…”

“As much as I’d like to take this moment to admonish your unfortunate penchant for ‘trusting people’,” Erik cuts in, and it’s really quite an unfair statement; these were the Avengers, and the last few months are the first ones she’s trusted someone who wasn’t Pietro in about ten years, “are you sure they weren’t also fooled? A casket can be made to appear full if no one checked, there could be someone else in it…”

She hadn’t checked. She hadn’t been able look at him, back then, even though she was supposed to, even though tradition required it. She wanted her memory of her brother to remain pure, keep the impish smile, his impatience that quickly grew into anger, everything that really was _him_ alive. Not a slack-faced dead body cleaned of all traces of what killed him and dressed in clothes he didn’t even own in life.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says, quietly, eyes closed. “He was dead. I know that for a fact. Not from someone’s else’s word or a coroner’s report,  I realize those could be falsified. I could feel it. One moment he was alive, then I could feel the bullets and then…” words fail her. She shakes her head as if to clear it. “Then he was gone.”

Erik is standing now, too, and he puts a hand on her shoulder. In her distress, she lets him.

“No one is holding you accountable for the actions of unscrupulous people. However, in the last few years we’ve seen mounting evidence that HYDRA’s human experimentation  -and mutant experimentation, they did that too -  has had real results. Not just you, but others.” He doesn’t mention Bucky Barnes, but Wanda is somehow sure he knows. He would, with Mystique to spy for him. “They must have manage to revive him sufficiently to suit their needs, it’s within the realm of reason. We do have enough data to infer that he’s alive somehow, kept somewhere - and we have a good idea of where, if so - we’ll need you there. But we need to act soon.”

“But you don’t know for sure?”

The thing in her chest is still clawing desperately, she’s still keeping it locked up.

“We can’t know for sure he’s not in that grave, without looking, but I didn’t want to without your permission.”

That’s… oddly moving, actually. Without looking into his head, she can’t tell exactly where she has Erik, will have to learn the old-fashioned, slow way. She realizes he maybe not entirely truthful. There’s something else going on. But like she said, they’re short on time.

“Alright, what are we waiting for?”

 

Which is how she finds herself standing in a dark cemetery, at eleven at night, with a very nervous-looking sister and two internationally wanted terrorists, one of them in the most ridiculous helmet known to man. There’s a guard on patrol at night , but he has a lot of area to cover, and Wanda has made sure that  he’s not going to be anywhere near them. Should someone else come by, they have the option of Mystique appearing as the guard, or Wanda gently persuading passers-by not to see them at all. Not that anyone will be out idly tonight, there’s a icy drizzle coming down, and they’re far from any houses. Lorna is trembling slightly, as much from the cold as from nerves, but she’s still here when she doesn’t need to be, and Wanda holds that to her credit. Wanda shows them the way to the grave, although Mystique, at least, already knows where it’s located, and habitually caresses her fingers over the inscription on the headstone.

 

It’s a good thing the casket has metal parts, or they could spend hours here; Wanda isn’t entirely sure she could bring herself to move these particular six feet of dirt, although mechanically it would be an easy feat. Instead, Erik hold out his hand and the earth moves. It only takes a few moments, although it is louder than she expected,  and soon the casket is standing on the ground next to the grave. She can’t move. It’s as if she’s stuck in place, the weight of every action too heavy to consider. It’s Mystique who kneels  on the ground and pushes the lid open. A beat of her heart. Two.

“It’s empty.”

Wanda opens her eyes, lets out a breath she doesn’t realize she’s been holding. Behind her, she can hear Erik and Lorna exhale as well.

Mystique is right. The white bedding has somewhat rotted where humidity has got in, and weights have been strategically placed throughout the length of the fabric, but there is no trace of Pietro.

 

Which means he’s out there. Which means he’s still alive, or at least was alive very recently and an entirely new feeling is awakened in her as the wild hope claws its way out. She can feel her eyes glowing. _Pietro. Pietro, I am sorry, I thought you were gone. Wherever you are, brother, hold old. I am coming for you. We are coming for you. Hold on_.

She turns to Erik.

“I seriously hope you have a plan, because we need to move, we need to move right now.”

He just nods, almost smiling.

  


They’re in the silver jaguar again, on their way westward, Mystique driving and seeming to know where she’s going. Erik silent and outwardly calm in the seat next to her. Wanda is anything but calm, but is doing a better job at hiding it than Lorna is.

_This is alright. This is better than it has been in months, this is alright._

_It’s not alright._ Someone may be hurting Pietro, and at the moment, she can do nothing to to stop it. She has to make it there. Punish the responsible. She has to make sure he’s safe.

“Do we know anything about what they’ve done to him?” She’s asking Mystique more than Erik, now, because Mystique is the one who has had direct access to information, the one who appears to understand the medical test files, who may know what’s going on.

“Not with any certainty. Some of the data certainly suggests invasive procedures, but the information I had doesn’t give any detail. I’d have to dig deeper, if they record it at all, and I made the judgment call that we don’t have time.”

Invasive procedures. Wanda can see it in front of her if she lets her mind wander that way, and she can’t, she can’t. She doesn’t have time to panic, even as the palms of her hands are starting to feel clammy. She has to stay calm, be useful, and if there’s even a chance that Pietro is still alive, she has to save him. They can be whole again. She purses her lips, but it’s Lorna who speaks up, for the first time since the left the warehouse.

“It sounds like we should have a medic, in case of emergency.”

Erik nods, like he has been planning on this, like he knows where Lorna is going. Which is good because Wanda certainly doesn’t.

“Mystique could deal with something non-critical, but if it’s worse than that…”

“I could call Jean.”

Wait, who now?

Erik sighs. “Since it you seem not to have noticed, Jean’s husband has some definite prejudices that could adventure this entire endeavor.”

“So she doesn’t tell him.” Erik looks like he’s about to interrupt again, but Lorna barrels on.

“Look, I don’t know what problem Scott has with you, and right now I don’t particularly care.  But I know Jean. I know she won’t tell him if it’s that important, she thinks there is a life on the line. I can call her, ask her to tell a white lie. He’d be pissed, but he wouldn’t be able to stop us if he doesn’t find out until we’re gone.”

Wanda has entirely lost track of what’s going on, but it sounds… promising? Erik and Lorna obviously have people in common, but that means that one of them can help, she is not about to start protesting. She knows Lorna well enough to trust her judgement,  that she cares about Pietro, although only through Wanda and perhaps a more abstract idea of siblinghood.

Mystique still appears dubious, but Erik nods in agreement, so Mystique stops the road at the curbside, and Lorna takes her phone out to start writing a message. They all wait, until Lorna makes a grimace and Wanda’s heart almost stops.

“She’s going to use Cerebro.”

This, too, seems to be mostly in order, whatever Cerebro is, and they continue waiting.

 

_And then_

 

**_Something_ **

 

_Happens_

 

Wanda can’t quite describe it, she has never communicated with another telepath before, but the other mind - Jean - has a touch that is at the same time tremendous and kind. The moment it connects with hers, Wanda knows without doubt that it harbors no ill intentions.

She feels it gently comb Lorna’s thoughts for the information she needs, then Raven’s. It can’t reach Erik while he’s wearing the helmet, but it stops by Wanda, seeing through her entire being, past the brave face, even past the anger that still seethes below, down to her core, to the new-born, flailing hope.

 

_Wanda, don’t worry. We’re going to all do what we can to save your brother. I can’t perform miracles, not anymore, but we’re all going to do our best._

 

Wanda is vaguely aware of the idea of a woman, middle aged, somehow simultaneously floating and standing in a huge silver metal sphere. The connection between her and Jean is an almost-visible string. It’s oddly calming. For the first time in what feels like forever, she isn’t alone in her head, and the thought of Jean leaving again is agonizing.

 _Hey, hey_ — there is a small amount of concern in Jean’s presence now — _I’m on my way. You’re doing ok. You’re holding up, Wanda. I’ll be there soon._

Then she’s gone.

 

Jean seems to have given Mystique directions where to go, because they’re off down the country road again, riding in silence for about fifteen minutes. Wanda is acutely aware of the passage of time, wondering what would happen if someone realized she’s gone, how they’ll go about looking for her, if she’ll be able to persuade them to help or if she’ll be forced to hurt someone. She would very much like not to, they have all been very kind to her. But she also knows this isn’t a situation where they’d go unquestioningly, especially not given her present company, and she absolutely has to go. Not trying is not even an option.  

But nothing untoward happens, and eventually they slow down and stop behind a blue Nissan. A tall, red-haired woman steps out and waves at them, wearing an autumn coat over something black. She walks over and opens the passenger side back door, where Lorna sits, hands her her keys.

“Lorna stays behind,” she says, not even bother to greet them first. Lorna starts to protest, but Jean - this is Jean, in the flesh - interrupts her.

“I couldn’t justify it to Alex or Scott if you were hurt, and I’d rather you head back to the Mansion maybe throw them off our trail once they realize I’ve gone.”

It’s a much kinder than saying ‘your abilities aren’t essential, and you’d be dead weight’ but no less final. Wanda already thinks she rather likes Jean, and Lorna must respect her too, because she steps out, grabbing the keys and squeezing Wanda’s hand before she leaves.  

Mystique snorts, as if she’s finding Jean’s kind delivery of truth either unnecessary of idiotic, or both. Jean simply ignores it; she seems familiar, if guarded, with both Erik and Mystique, and merely nods at them while she shakes Wanda’s hand, which honestly seems ridiculous in context.

 

They drive to another warehouse (how many of those are there here, anyway?), where the all climb out. Inside is an… aircraft of some kind. It doesn’t look like the kind of plane you can just buy, and a year earlier that wouldn’t have bothered Wanda one bit. Now, she wonders where Erik got it, if it was acquired especially for tonight, or if he’s just stealing military aircraft as some sort of absurd hobby.

“So where are we going?” Jean asks, surprisingly casually. Wanda supposes she could just have checked in Mystique’s head, but wants to hear it directly from Erik. Apparently stolen military planes doesn’t seem to phase her to any significant extent either. Or maybe it bothers her, and she just isn’t showing it; her thoughts are almost entirely closed off to Wanda, and with little enough effort, it seems.

“Central Romania. A few hours’ drive outside of the town of Sibiu, in the Carpathian Mountains. There’s a HYDRA base there that were never important enough for the Avengers to raid, but it’s one of the few remaining with the medical capacity to send out any results at all. Or at least so we hope.”

Jean nods and they buckle in and take off. Below her coat, Jean is wearing a black jumpsuit in a material Wanda thinks she recognizes.  The buckle at her waist wears the inscription of a metal ‘X’. Now, that’s something else to wonder about.

The plane is definitely VTOL, which doesn’t surprise Wanda, but then very little surprises her these days. Until tonight, she’s been moving in a kind of fog for months and months, operating on grim determination, and while the kicking creature of hope in her chest is well awake now, she seems to thaw out of it slowly.

Erik is with Mystique in the cockpit. Wanda can feel the push of increased g-force as they’re speeding up, although she thinks they won’t go faster than sound (she  assumed they’re capable of it, considering the plane they’re in) until they’re well over water, if not to obey aviation rules, at least to avoid discovery. It’s a curious though - she has spent most of her life attempting to avoid discovery, and has become quite skillful at it. But as with any skill, it has atrophied with lack of use, and most a year with the Avengers, operating almost aggressively openly, has rendered her more inept than younger-Wanda would have thought possible. Still, she knows things now, has skills that she would have thought impossible at a younger age. It evens out.

 

Then she can hear Jean in her head, just a brief touch.

_We’re going to speed up and go supersonic in the next few minutes. Brace yourself._

So they are capable of supersonic flight. As she thought.

 _This plane isn’t too shabby, but then again, we have a better one at home, so I’m not too impressed._ Wanda can almost hear Jean’s grin.

 

And she does brace herself, although less for the gravitational impact and more for the emotional. The first few times Pietro picked her up and carried her at speed, she had felt like she had been beaten black and blue, her breath stuck in her throat, her head spinning. But she developed an almost instinctive TK response, a counter pressure that allowed her to at least breathe freely. Now it kicks in and  she can feel the pressure, but it’s distant, less dangerous, and devastatingly familiar. She associates this pressure with safety, with the elation she could feel coming off Pietro in waves, pure joy of breaking free of the sluggish pace of ordinary time. She hopes fervently that he’ll be able to feel that elation again, that she’ll be allowed to partake.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize if the chapter name seemed crude to people who have read Grail and Special (if you haven't, there is a chapter of the same name in Special, in which Erik does some extremely morally reprehensible things. If Wanda knew, she wouldn't go within a mile of him, and she knows about Liberty Island.) As for the car, it's not the same one, if only because it would be twenty-five years old. I imagine this Erik buying - er, acquiring - silver Jags for on pure principle.


	8. We're Grazing Sheep In The Age of Wolves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The room inside is large and cavernous, lit only by harsh, fluorescent bulbs. It must reach through at least three levels’ worth of tunnel, upwards. Wanda wonders how close they have been as they’ve been following the spiral of tunnels downwards. She doesn’t know if it’s the light fixtures or the room itself, but it has sickish green-blue tint to it. The floors and walls are bare concrete, and it smells sharply of disinfectant and blood. It’s mostly empty, although there are contraptions and beds standing abandoned along the walls. And in the far corner there is a bed in use, surrounded by machines and medical equipment for which she doesn’t know, doesn’t want to know, the purpose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your kind comments <3
> 
> We're slowly nearing the end of this ride, but there are some bumps yet.
> 
> Content warning for:  
> references to non-consensual medical procedures.  
> Consensual blood draw (needles)

The trip goes relatively quickly, short hours to cross the Atlantic Ocean, at least until they reach the French coast. There, they have slow down, although from what Wanda can tell, they stay at a staggeringly high altitude. Jean gets up and stretches, finds a storage compartment behind were Wanda sits and takes out some energy bars and bottles. She grabs a few, gives Wanda one of each and heads up to the cockpit with the rest. Wanda drinks greedily, having entirely forgotten how thirsty she is. She eats the energy bar and makes a mental note to bring another with her; while she made sure to eat properly at dinner, and although the time difference in the main reason it’s light outside, her last proper meal was hours ago and she’s starting to run on empty. She remembers well Steve’s lesson about eating when she can and keeping her energy levels up.

Jean sits down and buckles in again. Now that they’re flying slower, conversation is possible, and although it’s not Wanda’s forte, Jean is clearly determined to make it work. She confirms, as Wanda suspected, that she’s Lorna’s sister-in-law, that she really is the J.E. Grey of mutant research fame, and that the X-Men exist. Wanda is surprised over how freely she shares this last bit of information, which must be classified in some way, although in context it’s perhaps the least of their worries.  

Jean also tells Wanda about how mutations manifest, how her school has taught young mutants to control their powers for over fifteen years, and of perhaps most relevance to Wanda, how she has come to believe that mutants are born with an instinctual ability to control of their mutation. Like babies are born with a capacity for speech, but must learn how to form words, so mutants are innately capable to use their mutation. Wanda nods. It explains a lot, about how relatively quickly she figured out how to move things, see things, implant thoughts, although at the time it felt impossibly slow. Yet the doctors has been impressed by her learning curve when she herself wasn’t.. She must have been thinking that quite loudly, because Jean smiles wryly.  
“I’m _almost_ envious. My manifestation was… less well-timed.”  
And suddenly Wanda can see a little girl, terrified next to her dead friend, years in mental institutions, of other people’s voices invading her privacy, before someone - _The Professor_ \- taught her to shield herself. It’s a frightening and heartbreaking vision. Why Jean is less keen on company in her head is understandable.  
  
There are many more things she wants to ask, but she doesn’t quite know where to start, and doesn’t know if she can hide her shameful secret feelings from someone as powerful as Jean. She doesn’t want to be pitied, but she also doesn’t want to be shunned; she likes Jean instinctively and while she herself has long settled on her more than sisterly love for Pietro as a foregone conclusion, it’s an entirely different thing to have someone else find out and pass judgement. In the end, she says nothing at all, waits for another opportunity, perhaps, and starts dozing off. As loud and physically uncomfortable as the ride is, it is hours past her usual bedtime and the emotional turmoil of the day has left her exhausted.

She’s awoken by a buzz at the edge of her consciousness. Frowning, she looks around her and realizes it’s coming from Jean. She can’t hear the details, but it’s clear she’s having a conversation with someone not physically present. For an instant, the buzz of the conversation is interrupted, and Jeans sends Wanda a mental hush before resuming. Wanda hesitates, but ultimately decides that she already has better reasons to trust Jean than to trust Erik, father or not, and certainly better than to trust Mystique. The conversation continues for a little while, before  goes quiet Jean sends a thought Wanda’s way.  
 _We’ll be landing in just a an hour or so, and I am not about to go into enemy territory without backup.  
_ Enemy territory. Here comes her first big showdown since Novi Grad. Her first one alone. In theory, she realizes she is far from alone, but people who aren’t Pietro don’t count, can’t count, on quite the same scale.

They land - to Wanda’s surprise in broad daylight - in a secluded area. It is not immediately obvious where a HYDRA base would be hiding, this certainly isn’t the castle where they were reborn, but Erik seems to know where he’s going. Sure enough, when Wanda concentrates she can feel the stir of human thought to their west, where there should be nothing but a mountainside.  Jean has repacked the contents of her bag into a backpack and is following a few steps behind the rest. Wanda is still in her running clothes, and she scolds herself for not packing her uniform. She knows she’s physically vulnerable, and has been grateful for the kevlar weave. As it is, she will have to rely on intercepting any attacks with her TK.

They reach what appears to be nothing more than a flat cliff wall, but Mystique walks up and holds her eye to something only she can recognize, and a door slides open.

Almost immediately, Wanda hears gunshots and is halfway through raising a shield, but Erik has already caught the bullets, casually throwing both them and the two shooters aside as they stride into the base.

The alarms immediately start going off, which would be more worrying if there were a larger amount of HYDRA agents around, but it still seems to trigger some sort of automatic response. They can hear gear tick, slots slide into place, and somewhere, a gun goes off, and then again. Still, they continue through the huge, largely empty, underground tunnels. The castle was never this empty, and Wanda realizes that it must have been one of HYDRA’s last true strongholds, thanks to the Scepter. The Avengers had taken the rest out, and she sends a brief thought of thanks that they don’t have to deal with more foot soldiers.

 

There’s a tunnel, and then there’s another tunnel, followed a by a room that opens to more tunnels. They have descended, slowly, for hours, must be at least a hundred meters under the mountain by now; Wanda can feel the solidness of the rock in all directions as she lets her thoughts slide outwards. Still, she’s not scared, she’s not even nervous. They have a goal, and she is a weapon, perfectly locked on that goal.

Until they reach a wall that Erik can’t budge.

“It must be solid concrete, possibly rock. I can get through it, but we’ll need  large object—“  
“It’s funny, Lensherr,” says someone behind them, just as Wanda is about to speak up, and she jumps; she definitely hasn’t felt anyone approaching, “you, of all people, should have learned to come prepared.”  
Wanda is on edge, but Jean is smiling, looking relieved, and while Erik definitely isn’t, he appears more annoyed than apprehensive.  
“Ah. Cyclops does us the honor. I should have known.” At the same time as Jean says “Scott!”  
A dozen threads connect in Wanda’s head, although she shouldn’t linger on them now. So this is Alex’ brother. He’s about the same height, a little older, and his hair a darker brown, but it hard to see what other similarities or differences there are, as the top half of his face is covered by some sort of black visor. Like Jean, he is wearing black uniform with the metal X at the buckle. Wanda almost smiles to herself. Not only is she looking at her sister’s brother-in-law, but at the elusive Cyclops, leader of the X-Men. And here she was, thinking her life couldn’t get more like a comic book.

Scott gestured to Erik and Mystique to move out of the way, which they do, and then he touches a dial on his visor and red light blasts out of it, utterly destroying not just the security door in front of them, but the next few down the corridor as well. The concrete is reduced to mere dust and rubble. Erik raises an eyebrow. “Very well, then. Let us continue.” But it is as if he has lost a little bit of his posture, a little bit of the pride with which his back is so straight. Wanda makes sure to keep a tally.  
“Well, talk about this later, my dear,” he says to Jean as they hurry down the newly bored tunnel.  
“You know what, Erik?  We really won’t.” Jean’s voice is as calm as it’s determined. Again, Wanda gets the distinct impression that there’s another game going on, that there’s a lot of history involving Erik, Scott and Jean, and if the circumstances were any different, she’s be hugely curious. As it is, she is just grateful for Scott’s arrival and the time it saves them.  
_Our plane is also more suitable for medical transportation, should that become necessary_ , says Jean’s quiet, controlled, voice in her head.  
  
How is Jean so calm? Wanda is aware that her own outward demeanor doesn’t reveal any anxiety, hasn’t in a long time, but as soon as the stakes are raised, she is a riot on the inside, has been since the day her rage died when she thought Pietro did. Jean seems calm throughout in an almost impossible way.  
 _I‘ve done this for a lot of years. Plus, being a doctor means having to keep a cool head at all times. For now, better keep our heads cool and solve the problems we encounter, not the ones we fear we might encounter. I know it isn’t easy, I used to be as anxious as you are. Give it a decade or two.  
_ Wanda glances over at Jean, who is smiling encouragingly at her. She attempts to smile back.

 

There’s no obvious mark on the door; just like the others, it has an alphanumerical name, but something about how it feels different. While the others continue down another endless corridor, Wanda takes a quick step to the left. The door is locked, but it’s an ordinary lock, and she quickly unlocks it from the outside it and steps inside.  
The room has the same feel to it she experienced in the Soldier’s thoughts, the same feeling that’s occasionally radiating from Steve when he and Sam returns from an unannounced field trip. It tastes like despair, anger, and pain all at the same time. The only actual scents in the air are of dust and mold, perhaps old traces of chlorine, but Wanda can still smell the burn of electricity, the stink of wild panic. She blinks once, twice, trying to shut out the images that come unbidden. Whatever happened here was long ago; the horrific chair in the middle of the room is covered in a thick layer of dust, as are the computers, and they look aged as well. Still, the very sight of it makes her skin crawl, and she has to force herself to move. A quick search through the drawers reveal no useful information, and so she leaves, heart beating quickly, catching up with the others before anyone but Jean realizes she was gone.

One thought remains, though: the people who did this have Pietro now. She _must_ find him.

 

There corridors are becoming increasingly serpentine, the base more mine-like. Wanda takes the lead, being able to sense the presence of others before they have any chance of being seen. Jean could do the same, she realizes, but opts not to, and Wanda isn’t sure why.  
She imagines the base like a badger’s den, a seemingly endless series of tunnels and chambers, one after another. Just as she’s beginning to think they’ve gone too far, ventured past the point where there’s even people anymore, she can feel the mind of someone, no, several someones, further ahead. Three people at least, two guards, and… a scientist of some sort? He's deeply in thought, analyzing numbers on a computer screen, and will probably not pose a threat. The guards, though... She holds her hand up and the group stops.

“People ahead.” She whispers. "I can’t tell if they’re expecting us.”

They move forward more quietly. The final turn in the corridor is about ten meters from door, which is indeed guarded by two armed men. Scott’s the one to move, his blast knocking them both out of the way. Mystique, looking somewhat peeved that she wasn’t allowed to be useful (or perhaps that the men are only unconscious, not dead) picks up their guns as Erik forces the door open, metal groaning in protest.

The room inside is large and cavernous, lit only by harsh, fluorescent bulbs. It must reach through at least three levels’ worth of tunnel, upwards. Wanda wonders how close they have been as they’ve been following the spiral of tunnels downwards. She doesn’t know if it’s the light fixtures or the room itself, but it has sickish green-blue tint to it. The floors and walls are bare concrete, and it smells sharply of disinfectant and blood. It’s mostly empty, although there are contraptions and beds standing abandoned along the walls. And in the far corner there is a bed in use, surrounded by machines and medical equipment for which she doesn’t know, doesn’t want to know, the purpose. There’s someone in the bed.

Suddenly, the fog of the last few months dissipates entirely and reality snaps into sharp focus. It’s him, she can feel it in her bones. They’re here. They did it.

She starts running.

She’s maybe halfway across the room when she notices movement to her left. A tall balding man in a lab coat and carrying - is that a scalpel? She hopes it isn’t, the implications are still too horrific to consider -  is approaching her fast, and just as she is gathering her thoughts to sweep him aside, something - a filing cabinet -  hits him square in the chest, knocking him towards one of the walls. She can hear a sick, wet sound followed by an ever sicker crunch, followed by Scott swearing. She doesn’t look back. Another ten steps and she’s standing next to Pietro.

He’s unconscious, so deeply that she can’t reach him, but he’s _there_. His arms are spread akimbo, making him look almost crucified. Someone must have bothered to shave him, because he only has a few days’ worth of stubble. He is pale and thin, much thinner than he’s been since the streets, and there is medical equipment, sensors and needles and things she doesn’t recognize, attached to him everywhere. A rosette at his throat holds at least ten tubes, there are additional ones in both his arms and hands. She can see that his gunshot wounds are healed, but there are new, sinister-looking wounds and scars over his chest. It looks like the the back of the bed is hollow, and there are more lines and wires attached to his back through there. Her heart nearly stops at the sight of him.

She stands by his side, touches his hair, lets her hand rest on his cheek. It’s warm, though not as warm as he should be. But he’s there, his skin is soft under her fingers and everything else, Erik, Mystique, Jean and Scott, the dead scientist in the other end of the room, the X-Men and Avengers and the rest of the world is mere noise drowned out by the rapid beating of her heart, the rush of blood through her veins. They’re together.  She thought this moment would never come, she thought she has been left alone forever. She reaches out to his hand, touches it where she can without disrupting needles.. Somehow, amidst the rest of the loss, his smile, his thoughts in her head, the smell of his skin, she’s forgotten to miss his hands, so often wrapped around hers. They’re the same as before; large, somehow safe, with wide knuckles and a slightly crooked little finger; a broken bone that didn’t heal straight. The pads of his fingers are rough, the inside of his thumb soft as silk. But like the rest of him, his hands are too thin, not just starved, but atrophied from lack of use. How long has he been suspended like this? She can’t think about it, not now.

 

Wanda doesn’t feel the way the others are looking at them; Scott’s pursed lips, Mystique’s expressionless face, Erik’s curious satisfaction and Jean’s growing concern. She’s wrapped in a cocoon of completeness so profound that she doesn’t understand how she could even bear the world these last few months without it.

Jean is working quickly, her eyes and fingers running over numerous instruments and pieces of medical equipment. Mystique is next to her, while Scott and Erik are waiting behind Wanda, who is still by Pietro’s side. She’s not about to leave anytime soon. Other than Jean’s footsteps and the buzz and beeping of machinery, the room is silent.

Then Jeans’s footsteps, too, stop.  
“Wanda…”  
She doesn’t look up, her hand still on Pietro’s cheek.  
“Wanda please look at me.”  
This can’t be good. And by the look on Jean’s face, no, it isn’t.  
“They have equipment here that… I’m not entirely sure how a lot of it works, but what is clear is that it’s what’s keeping his body functioning.  I will be honest: in his current state he wouldn’t survive without it.” 

No. No. Nonononononono.

“But he’s healed.” She can’t accept this, not when she’s come this far, not when she has too much to tell him, not when they are this close to being properly reunited. “He had bullet wounds, I thought he died from them, now they’re gone.”

Jean’s voice is soft.  
“Yes, they must have been able to keep him alive for quite a while. But…”  
Mystique cuts in.  
“Whatever it is these people did to your brother, they have practically hollowed him out. The surprising part if how long they’ve managed to keep him like this. It can’t have been pleasant.”  
“But he is alive.” She shakes her head. The devices she recognizes as life support and monitoring are beeping at intervals, his breathing, though machine operated, is there.  
“Artificially. With a room’s worth of life support equipment that we can’t take with us. Honestly, it’s inhumane as it is. He should be disconnected, if only to avoid giving them more information.” 

“Dare.” Her voice is cold, her eyes are glowing and every ounce of old anger is flaring. The air crackles around her hands, that she has raised in front of her on instinct. _Protect Pietro._ Jean and Scott both take a step backward, Mystique is, to her immense credit, not intimidated.  
“Your brother is gone. Don’t be a child, get over it.”  
“Raven, really!” It’s Erik, and for a second, Wanda is confused. He never called her ‘Raven’ before. But Mystiques does step down. Jean, though she looks uncomfortable with the brutality of Mystique’s delivery, hasn’t contradicted her.  
“I’m sorry, but there’s not much we can do” she simply say, and she is back at monitoring the instruments.  
Her voice is still full of compassion, but it matters very little to Wanda. Her rage simmers down and two thoughts are battling for her attention; the creature of hope has transformed into small, white hot ball of indiscriminate hate towards these people who are attempting to take her brother from her again. The other is once again concerned with her memories of what Jean said during the flight. Now Erik, Jean and Scott are talking above her head, discussing strategy and next steps and she can hear Jean’s thoughts from earlier echo in her mind.

 _The more kids I met, the clearer it became to me that mutants are instinctively aware of how to control their abilities. Genetic and neurological research support this idea, with relevant brain regions being either expanded or seeing increased activity. They often can’t explain how they do it, just like you can’t explain exactly how you walk without thinking about. But it’s there, sometimes from birth, but at least from the time of manifestation. They just_ know _._

 

“Jean,” she says quietly, and then again, louder, when the others won’t stop talking.  
“Yes?” Jean’s voice is still quiet and subdued, quickly switching from X-Man to doctor.  
“Remind me again of what you said about instinctual control of one’s mutation.”  
“I… well… What I was saying is that most mutants I met had an innate knowledge of what they can do, and how to do it, barring one case, where a brain injury prevented it.” She glances at Scott, she’s worried, about Wanda as much as about Pietro now.  
“Okay.” Wanda can hear herself sounding distant; her hand is still on Pietro’s chest. “I just wanted to make sure I didn’t misunderstand”

Other than a quick glance full of concern, again from Jean, the others mostly ignore her. Wanda can hear their words like faint buzzing, insects disturbing her thought process. She turns her thoughts inward, pulls from the hate, harnesses it. Pulls together every bit of energy she has left, all her hope, and pulls the rest of the force she needs from the earth that surrounds them. It may make the others feel claustrophobic, but to Wanda, they mean safety. She’s surrounded by what brings her her power. Then she turns her focus on the frayed edges of reality, where the world itself is getting blurrier. If she can just grab a hold of the edge. She reaches

_and she has it, holds onto it tight, like a thin plastic sheet covering everything, still barely hinting of what is underneath. With a sudden certainty, Wanda knows, decides, what is waiting below, and she_

 

_grabs_

_and_

_pulls_

_and_

_reality_

_shivers_

_and_

**_shifts_**

 

_ever so slightly in her grasp_

 

She lets go, exhausted. There’s sudden movement around her, Jean jumps to action and starts double-checking equipment that is suddenly beeping at new intervals, Raven is next to her, they’re disconnecting some tubes and connecting others, probably communicating telepathically, but shutting her out. Whether or not she’s succeeded  isn’t immediately obvious, but she knows that at least she managed to do something. She can feel that Pietro is different from before, somehow more like he’s supposed to be. More Pietro. That’s all she can tell, and she was starting to feel wobbly as soon as the world stabilized from the shift.

“What the hell just happened?” someone asks. Male voice. Scott?

It’s hard to tell what’s going on, the room is spinning madly, and before Wanda knows it, someone has summoned up a chair and gently sat her down in it. She feels hollowed out, like a deflated balloon or emptied sack of flour. She’s breathing rapidly. And then she can feel him. It’s a vague movement, so weak it’s barely there, the open connection is long gone, but she’s aware that he’s there, unconscious but there, and she throws her mind towards him with wild abandon—

—only to be thrown back by an overwhelming wave of pain. Her vision darkens for a second, she nearly keels over, seated as she is, and over on the other side of the bed, she can tell Jean is doing the same thing, caught by Scott at the last minute.

“Jesus fucking Christ, how the fuck can they do this and not have him anesthetized…”

_Wanda, I have to concentrate on making him ready to be moved, so I’m going to need your help._

She shuts out the pain for a second, follows Jean’s train of thought.

_They don’t appear to have been giving him any anesthetics, and he’s still in a critical condition, though whatever you did — we’ll talk about later. He’s are looking much better. He’s going to live, I hope. Now, I’ll have what I need on the jet, but I’ll need you to be focus on blocking the pain until we get there._

_Look at this, this is how you do it._

And she follows Jean’s directions through Pietro’s brain, sifts through the science lingo - Jean knows what everything here is called, what it’s for - and while her body is on the chair still, her mind is in firm control of making sure he feels no pain. It’s fascinating, she can simultaneously feel exactly what his brain is feeling and see it at work. The neurons firing is like fireworks, but she can figure out which signals are pain and turn them off. It isn’t particularly hard work, but after the earlier ordeal, it’s plenty. She focuses as hard as she can, keeping his pain at bay her only objective.

Perhaps seconds pass, perhaps it’s minutes or hours, but eventually they are getting to ready to leave. Someone is talking to the outside via a commlink, Jean and Mystique are running next to the gurney, Erik is clearing the way, opening and closing doors, and Scott is supporting her, one arm around her waist as she concentrates on Pietro.

 When they reach the main doors, they’re met by a dense fog, but everyone barrels right into it, showing no hesitation. Wanda stops for a second, glances behind her, but Scott shakes his head and pulls her forward with him.

“I realize how you must feel, but the base traverses most of the mountain. If you collapse it, all the villages around here will probably go as well.”

She purses her lips. He can’t know what she’s feeling, of course, but he’s also right. It doesn’t mean that she isn’t angry, that there isn’t a space inside her that’s boiling with desire to hurt the people who did this to her brother, to her soul. But most of the base was empty anyway, and she’s no longer prepared to take dozens of innocent people down in the process of punishing a few. She moves on, laser-focused on Pietro.  It’s almost a little funny, how doing her best to not think about him kept her going for so long, and now he’s the only that keeps her knees from buckling from pure exhaustion.

 When the ground becomes too uneven for the gurney to run on, Erik simply lifts it up, and they continue until an aircraft appears, seemingly out of nowhere in the preternaturally thick fog. It’s not the one they arrived in. Others, all wearing the same black uniforms, disembark to help move Pietro’s gurney aboard, while Erik and Mystique stay behind. Wanda thinks that perhaps was the plan all along, but it’s all the more unavoidable with Scott glaring  - metaphorical, fortunately  - holes through them.

“This, my dear,” Erik says to her “is where separate.” He’s awfully liberal with the use of that ‘dear’.

“You will keep me updated on his condition?” Wanda nods. Probably a bad idea, considering, but it isn’t really something she can deny him, after this. He’s just about to turn when Scott calls after him.

“Erik? You heard what I told Wanda about the base. Leave it.”

“I hardly think that’s your prerogative.”

“It is now. You leave the base to be dealt with by the authorities, we leave you alone. For now.”

Erik sighs. It’s the second time Scott has given him an order in a short period of time, but he nods. “Very well, Cyclops.”

Then he’s gone in the fog, and Wanda is ushered into the aircraft. In the back, Jean and another woman are setting Pietro up with more drip bags and sensors. She hasn’t let go of him for a second, but now Jean is gently prodding her again.

“The morphine drip is running, you should be able to stop in a few minutes.” Wanda is vaguely aware that the others are eyeing her cautiously.

She waits, almost unaware of time.

 

 _Okay Wanda, you can let go now_ .

Her presence may no longer be medically necessary, but she’s not leaving Pietro, not now. He’s still not near awake, but much less deeply unconscious than when they found him.  His mind is still calm when she lets go, the morphine numbing him to all the damage she couldn’t undo.

“Kitty, can you help Wanda get strapped in over here?”

A woman her own age, maybe a little older, helps her with the buckles and straps. They’re not complicated, but it’s as if Wanda’s muscles have stopped obeying her altogether. Jean straps in on the other side of Pietro’s bed, the engines roar, and they’re off. The woman - Kitty? - hands her a water bottle and another protein bar of some kind, and she has presence of mind to finish both.

They kick in blood sugar makes her feel slightly more alive, and although she never once takes her eyes off of Pietro, she leans back in her chair. Her work is done for the moment, and while she knows she made a difference - knows she made _the_ difference  - she finds it hard to relax. She eats a banana when Kitty offers her one. Leans forward again, places her hand on Pietro’s, careful to avoid even grazing the oxygen meter on his index finger.

“Be calm,” she says, in Romany rather than English, because although she is speaking aloud, her words are really only meant for them. Well, maybe just her; Pietro is still too far away to hear her. “The worst is over now. Just hold on until we get back, just hold on, please hold on. I need you to be alive. I need you beside me again.”

She is surprised when one of the others on the plane addresses her.

“He is your brother?” he asks, in Romany as well. She nods. The man, who is entirely blue, just like Mystique, but has pointy, elf-like ears and deep indigo hair, introduces himself as Kurt Wagner, Like the others, he’s wearing the black X-Men uniform. It makes her feel curiously safe, knowing that she’s not alone. Logically, she understands that there must be a number of Roma mutants out there, but knowing intellectually and knowing in person are two entirely different things.

“Has he been injured?” asks Kurt, “at the HYDRA base?” Wanda wonders how much the X-Men knows about her and Pietro, about Magneto, about why they came.

“They… did things to him. I’m not sure why. To understand his abilities, I assume. ” The more she thinks about HYDRA, the more she hates them. Like children, picking their toys apart to see how they work. Only the toys are living, breathing human beings. Herself, Bucky Barnes, and now Pietro _again_. She can forgive slights against herself easily enough, she never would have survived past eleven had she not been able to, but she can’t forgive anyone who would hurt her brother. Where there was nothing but a gray emptiness for the last few months, a fire has started burning again. It’s less explosive than before, more seething, but it’s there all the same. Someone else’s memory flickers through her mind; Steve’s. After Bucky fell from the train (his horror at the memory shakes her even now) he promised not to stop until all of HYDRA was dead or captured. He holds to this still, she realizes. And once they’re back on the ground safe and in one piece, she’ll do all she can to help him. Because she understands now. She understands what matters and what she needs to do.

She blinks. Kurt has said something, and she was to wrapped up in thought to hear him.

“I’m sorry, I’m a little distracted.”

“Would you mind if I pray for him?”

Would she?

“I… no, not at all. Thank you. I don’t think I have prayed since I was ten years old.” If even then. She can’t recall ever being very religious. “I’m afraid I don’t have much in the way of faith.”

Kurt just smiles. He closes his eyes and starts praying. He has a rosary, and it’s peculiarly calming to listen to him. After a few minutes, she closes her eyes, attempts to mumble along. A tendril of her consciousness is still fixed on Pietro, but the rest is lost in the ritual. It’s not that she necessarily believes that it will make a difference, but she has to do something and it’s not like reciting verses is going to do any harm. Besides, she finds it very kind of Kurt to pray for someone he doesn’t even know.

 

An hour pass. Wanda is almost dozing off in her chair when the plane slow down and Jean gets up. Wanda can feel a sudden wave of anxiety coming off the older woman as she adjusts Pietro’s drip line, checks his blood pressure once, twice. She’s swearing quietly under her breath, and an icy pit starts growing at the bottom of Wanda’s stomach. What now?

“Do you know which blood type Pietro is, Wanda?” Jean asks, in a professional, matter-of-fact tone that is in stark contrast to her state of mind just a second ago.

“He’s O Positive, why?”

“He lost a lot of blood, with whatever they did to him. I’ve already given him two bags of liquid, but it’s apparently not enough. At home, we have access to a blood bank, but no here.”

“I’m O Negative, if that matters.”

Jean raises her eyebrows. “Now that’s a little unusual, isn’t it?”

Wanda shrugs. “Most things about me are a little unusual these days.”

“Anyway,” Jean responds, “I would prefer not to use you as a donor. You’re not in great physical condition, and I don’t want two patients on my hands.”

“I’m just tired, honestly. I haven’t slept in a while, but I felt a lot better after eating. I have great iron values.” She realized that she’s starting to sound a little desperate, and pauses for a second to breathe. “They check us every eight weeks, I was told specifically how well I was doing last time.”

“When did they draw you last?”

She shrugs. “Three weeks ago?”

“And how much?”

“I’m not sure - one of the small tubes with a purple top?”

Jean nods, almost to herself, and Wanda takes another deep breath.

“Is he in any danger?”

“I’m going to be honest with you, he’s lost a lot of blood, even after you… helped. I’m worried. I’m not seeing any other reasons for the drop, he’s somehow not in shock, so I am inclined to believe it has to do with blood volume. If it continues to drop at this rate, he might not make it home.”

“Then what are you waiting for?” Wanda has already unbuckled herself and removed her jacket. Jean is still hesitating, seems to be weighing her options, but ultimately relents and asks Kitty to rearrange the drip bags as she rummages through a drawer. Then she ties a tourniquet over Wanda’s upper arm. It takes about ten seconds to realize that finding a vein in a half-dark moving airplane isn’t exactly easy, and it takes Kitty holding a flashlight and Wanda pumping her fist for a while before the needle is inserted and blood starts flowing. From Wanda’s arm it goes into a drip bag, and from the bag into Pietro.

“Are you doing alright?” asks Jean after a little while. Wanda nods. The only part of this she has problems with is the tourniquet, which she always finds uncomfortably tight. She’s never had issues with blood draws. Women, Dr Cho has told her, generally have a lot less problems than men, and Wanda remembers with amusement that Rhodey, who is one of the toughest people she has met, has to look in the other direction and do breathing exercises whenever they draw him. As it is, she is content to sit there, watching her heart pump life into Pietro’s body. It is as it should be.

 

Eventually Jean disconnects the needle and gives Wanda a compress to press against the small wound while she readjusts Pietro’s drip.

“That’s all I am prepared to take from you right now,” she says. “I’ll keep monitoring him, but he’s looking better.” Wanda slips back into her jacket - the plane is cold - and as soon as Jean and Kitty are buckled in again, the plane speeds up.

It’s another long stretch of time before they slow down again. They’re still going, and fast, but noticeable slower than before. Jean stands up and takes off towards the front of the plane. She hasn’t been doing anything else than keeping her eye on monitors for the last half-hour, so Wanda doesn’t find reason to be worried just yet. Still, Jean comes back after less than five minutes, and sits down next to Wanda, on the other side from Kurt.

_We we were thinking we might have to take him back to the Mansion, but my colleague Hank has been in touch with your Dr Cho. We should be able to fly directly to your base, but we’ll need to speak to Dr Cho in order to give us clearance to land._

It’s hard to leave. She doesn’t want to stop looking at Pietro, doesn’t want to let go of him for a second.

_It’s alright. I’ll be here, and it will only take a minute._

So Wanda tears her eyes off of Pietro, unbuckles herself and makes her way to the cockpit. Scott is piloting the plane and the co-pilot is a woman, a little older than Wanda, a white streak in her otherwise dark hair. Helen Cho is indeed on the view screen, looking concerned.

“Wanda,” she says then, “I’m glad you’re alright. We were all very worried about you.”

“Sorry. I couldn’t tell anyone where I was going”  She realizes that it’s a decision she’ll go over and over in her head the coming weeks, but she can’t bring herself to regret it. It was a matter of life and death, wasn’t it? “Has Jean —  has Dr Grey told you about Pietro?”

“Yes, yes, of course. We’re we’re expecting you in a little while.  Oh, and Wanda”, she asks then, using the prearranged phrase “what kind of party are we having?”

“Just a dinner party. No extra guests.”  No threats, no known enemy agents.

”Very well. We’re preparing the Cradle and the rest of the medlab as we speak. Captain Rogers will meet you when you land.”  And she’s out. Wanda heads back to her seat, keeping both an eye and her thoughts on Pietro for the short remainder of the flight. It might not make a difference, but it gives her peace of mind.

 

They touch ground. Almost as soon as the doors open, Wanda can hear voices, speaking quickly in the dark. Dr Cho and her staff, and someone else are out on the airstrip. Jean and Kitty are already preparing Pietro to be rolled out, and at the same time as they meet up with Dr Cho, Steve runs up to Wanda, eyes her quickly to make sure she’s alright. He’s not in uniform, but in sweatpants and a t-shirt. She wonders if it’s late evening or very early morning, realizing that she doesn’t even know what day it is, or how much time has passed since she left, supposedly to go for a run, Thursday evening.

“Steve--” she starts, and several of the X-Men straighten and look their way; you don’t expect to see Captain America in his pajamas, even at the NAF, she supposes. But he stops her from continuing with a shake of his head. This is something they can discuss later. At least he doesn’t appear to be angry at her.

“You okay?” he asks instead.

She nods. “Yeah.” She is okay. She’s exhausted, but she’d like to say she’s doing alright, considering.

“Then we’re okay. No one’s pissed, except maybe Natasha, but she’s in Argentina right now, so you’re in luck there.” He shoots her a quick, though somewhat tense, grin.

Still somewhat lightheaded, Wanda walks as fast as she can to keep up with the medics as the medical transport -  a large flat vehicle that looks a bit like one of those buses she’s seen in airports, at least from the outside - prepares to leave. Steve is just about to steady her by her elbow when they hear someone coming running through the darkness. They stiffen momentarily, both of them hyper vigilant even in the safety of controlled-access base, but it’s Clint Barton, and judging from Steve raised eyebrows, the only visible sign of surprise, he must have just landed. Simply nodding in greeting, he quietly follows aboard the transport. Jean, Wanda realizes, is still coming along, conversing softly with Dr Cho in Korean.

“Which part, exactly, of ‘running off on what could be a considerably dangerous wild goose-chase along with a few federally wanted fugitives without even checking in with my team’ seemed like a great idea?” asks Clint, a little testily. Maybe Steve was a little wrong about only Natasha being pissed, but then again, maybe not. Clint sounds more concerned.

She would glare at him, but he’s not wrong, and she’s very lucky that it all worked out. Well, very lucky and just a little bit skilled.

“I like the part where my brother is alive at the end.” She simply says, hearing how tired she sounds.

“Fair point.” Though he doesn’t appear entirely satisfied, he doesn’t push.

She’s quiet, then, her eyes back on Pietro, as are the others’. He looks peaceful. She hopes to every higher power she can think of that he’ll be ok. And as if he could hear her  - or perhaps it’s only very obvious - Steve gives her an encouraging smile.

“Dr Cho says the Cradle has been entirely reconstructed, so he should be good as new when they’re done. Now, I don’t entirely understand the process, but depending on the injuries, it the amount of time it can take—”

“Based on what Dr Grey tells me,” Dr Cho interrupt, barely glancing up from her patient “and from what I can observe, I estimate a few hours at least. Probably six to seven. I can give you a more exact number in a few minutes.”

 

And indeed, just a minute after, they’re docking with the medlab. Vaguely, Wanda remembers Natasha telling her it has direct access to the airstrip. They roll Pietro into a  room but as she tries to follow, stops her at the door. She wants to protest, but Clint interrupts.

“In my experience, let the medics deal with the medical stuff. They’ll let you know when they know more. Now, you look like a ghost, when was the last time you ate?”

“She’s had some snacks in the last few hours, but she needs proper food. She also donated 450 ccs of blood. I’d recommend a full meal and some sleep…” it’s Jean, who has stayed behind. She smiles at Wanda, in doctor mode still. “… But I don’t think you’d take very kindly to me ordering you to do anything. So get some food and a bottle of juice while we’re waiting. I’ll stay here with you.”

Steve flags an orderly down to go fetch them something to eat, and Wanda sinks down into an armchair in the waiting room. She’s still tired, but it’s more of a physical fatigue now. Whatever kind of mental energy she summoned to — do whatever she did, warp reality itself? — has replenished itself, and she no longer feels as drained. But the hours without sleep, walking, flying… She can feel those weighing down on her, tired to her very bones.

“What time is it?” she asks Clint, who is sitting quietly next to her and Jean as they are eating their sandwiches. “Also, what day?”

“2:47 a.m., on Saturday, November 28th. Which is several hours after my bedtime, mind you.”

Saturday morning. She just been gone a little over a day. It feels like a lifetime, like she’s on perhaps her fifth lifetime now, before the bombings, then before Ultron, before Pietro was taken from her. How is he? She needs to be by his side, not in a waiting room eating sandwiches.

Jean puts her hand on hers. Jean’s mental reach, Wanda realizes, far surpasses her own, and she’s kept tabs on Dr. Cho’s staff on Wanda’s behalf.

 

_They’re preparing him for the Cradle now. Once he’s inside is, you’ll be allowed to wait in the same room, if you’d like._

 

Wanda nods, chewing on a sandwich that frankly tastes like nothing at all. She swallows a mouthful down with some apple juice, determined to finish the food. She remember the last time she put her hands on that Cradle, how the world changed in a moment. There are things she likes about the world she has now - the other Avengers, surprisingly, and Lorna - and she can’t wait to tell Pietro about them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And if this was the story of how Pietro came to be not dead, it would end here. But it's not the story of how Pietro came to be not dead, is it?
> 
> Quick note from Grail: "He only called her 'Raven' when he was disappointed with her."
> 
> Look, my Wanda has reality warping powers too :) But I didn't want her to be all-powerful; why bother with Erik and Scott and Jean if she was? She would probably have been a lot more effective if she had been rested and fed, but she wasn't, and this was her first attempt, and she still pulled it off. Good job, fictional character I am way too emotionally invested in.


	9. Interlude III: Lazarus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Waking has become his enemy. The slow dissolving of unconsciousness he has experienced for most of his life has given way to an abrupt pull, straight into pain. But now, to his bewilderment, there is no pain. Instead, he remains somewhat absent, a little fuzzy, as if wrapped in cotton, only gradually sliding towards wakefulness and awareness of his surroundings. It’s bright, he notices; a warm, uniform brightness. It’s a stark contrast to before, when the pain was always wrapped either in half-darkness or blinding, harsh lights, somehow aimed directly into his skull.

Waking has become his enemy. The slow dissolving of unconsciousness he has experienced for most of his life has given way to an abrupt pull, straight into pain. But now, to his bewilderment, there is no pain. Instead, he remains somewhat absent, a little fuzzy, as if wrapped in cotton, only gradually sliding towards wakefulness and awareness of his surroundings. It’s bright, he notices; a warm, uniform brightness. It’s a stark contrast to before, when the pain was always wrapped either in half-darkness or blinding, harsh lights, somehow aimed directly into his skull. And he’s not restrained, attached only to a drip tube in his arm, although there’s something warm and heavy on his left hand.  
  
Pietro blinks slowly. Blinks again.  
  
He’s in a bed. He’s in a bed, in a small room, and Wanda is holding his hand. Well, it’s more that she has her hand on top of his, having falling asleep with her head next to him on the bed. Her hair is messy, she’s not wearing any makeup, and a drop of drool is making its way across her cheek. Yet she is the single most beautiful sight he has seen in his entire life.  
Wanda. Here, in the flesh, right next to him, touching him. He’s alive. He’s alive, which is odd, because now, without blinding pain to distract him, he can remember. Remember Barton, remember Zrinka’s brother, Ultron in the plane, bullets piercing his body… The Cradle. They must have gotten the Cradle in working order again. And he’s alive when he thought he was dead. But what happened in between?  
He takes in a deep breath, just to feel it, and his throat somehow doesn’t ache at all. Something starts beeping though, and there’s only a moment - really, a real moment, even from his sped-up point of view, before Wanda wakes up and sits up, blinking, seemingly surprised at having been asleep at all. Then she looks right at him. The mental link they’ve had since HYDRA is nowhere that he can sense, but they have always had their own form of nonverbal communication that no one could take from them. They know each other. She looks like the weight of the world has just been lifted off of her shoulders, like he hung the moon. Then she starts crying.  
Which is a really why it’s terribly unfortunate that that’s the exact time a doctor knocks on the door and steps in. It takes a few seconds - real, eternal seconds this time - before he recognizes her as one of Dr Cho’s staff. His still-foggy mind is hard at work putting the jigsawy bits of the world he sees together with the one he knows, and it’s not easy, because at the same time the doctor is attempting to check his pupils and temperature and god-knows-what, he’s trying to console Wanda.  
“Don’t cry, Wandika. We're alive, we’re here, wherever here is, it seems to be a very nice place in any case, and you are too. So nice. Look at you, Wanda.  _Ow_. So pretty. My sister is the prettiest girl in the entire world. So please, please, don’t cry.”  
She is still crying. But now she’s also laughing, so it can’t be altogether bad.  
“God, how stoned are you?”  
“According to all available sources,” he pauses to check “very.” Yup. World still spinning. Still not sure which language he’s speaking. Possibly several.  
  
“Mr Maximoff?”, says the doctor, definitely in English, and he nods.  
“Right, yes, that’s me.”  
“On a scale from one to ten, how would you rate you level of pain right now?”  
“Zero. Null. No pain.”  
“Good. That’s to be expected, but it’s still a good sign.  I am going to turn off your morphine drip. Now, a person with an average metabolism wouldn’t notice any changes for a few minutes, but we haven’t been able to do adequate charting of your regenerative cycle to know for sure. I would assume you will start feeling more like yourself immediately, but the full effect may not wear off for another five to ten minutes.”  
He nods. Wanda is still sitting at the foot of his bed, smiling and teary-eyed.  
  
  
Her soul is a ladybug, soaring high over everyone else, wings fluttering with the rapid beats of her hearts. That’s what their father would call her when she was little. He’d throw her high in the air and catch her again, and she would shriek with joy. Excitement and security, mixed into delight. And that's is how she's feeling now, as if she’s been thrown into the air alone but caught again, safe and warm under Pietro’s gaze.  
He is within touching distance, warm, a little high off of painkillers still, but unquestioningly here. It’s more than she ever had hoped to have again. He’s smiling, holding her hand. Looking around, more curious and less docile by the minute.  
“Where are we?”  
“We’re in America again, in upstate New York. We just found you last night. HYDRA…” She presses her lips together, not sure how much to tell him. “I guess they reclaimed you. After we thought you were dead.”  
“I remember… something.” He is definitely less out of it, his expression clouding over momentarily as he closes his eyes. She squeezes his hand. “Don’t think about that now. You are safe. We’re okay.”  
“We’re okay,” he echoes. “How long?”  
“It’s almost December.”  
His eyes are wide as he considers the implications. Well over half a year of which he remembers very little, and from what he _does_ remember, that’s probably for the best.  
A nurse has come in and removed the equipment that was monitoring him, but he’s given orders to stay in bed until the doctor can return to evaluate and sign him out. Their fingers entwine with a little bit more desperation, though they sit still on the hospital bed.  
“Well,” says Pietro, “tell me what has happened.”  
“A lot has happened.” She’s quiet for a beat. “To me, to us, to the world. It might be easier to show you.”  
  
He nods immediately, and she reaches in, tenderly, so tenderly, to reestablish the bond. To connect to Pietro’s mind is like nothing else; the way he opens up to her immediately, the frictionless communication. More than anything it feels _right_. Before they even begin sharing their memories, they take a moment to sit there, delighted in being whole, being one. Then she shares. Everything. Well, _almost_ everything. The discussions about his funeral, the new Avengers, Stark, Clint, and Thor leaving, Steve’s secret quest. Mystique’s visits, Erik, Lorna, Jean and Scott. The May Day march and how it filled her with belief, how Kurt prayed over him in the X-Men’s jet. She didn’t intend to share how lonely she has been, how numb she felt and how ragged the edges of her soul were, how she ripped reality itself apart to bring him back to her, but he takes that too, smooths the wound over and heals her by his very presence.  
  
The only thing she hides, intentionally and with great care, are the feelings she has carried since they were sixteen and that she has let herself dwell on in his absence. She brought them out, a source of comfort and nostalgia when he was gone, but now that he is back, now that they are together, those feelings no longer matter. They’ll be back like before, an indivisible unit, without any need or desire for change. They talked about them once, they decided not to talk about them again. He’s said _no_ once, she doesn’t want him to say it again, doesn’t know if she would bear it.  
  
Finally, she reaches in and touches on his memories. They’re flashes more than true recollections; claustrophobia, unspeakable pain, the irritable voices of scientists, more pain. Longing for, not fear of, death. They’re both trembling a bit, steadying each other mentally. Sending silent words of comfort to each other.  
  
_Sssshh_ , he says, _it’s alright now. I am here and safe and healthy and we’re together_.  
_Hush_ , she says, _I’m okay now. You’re here, and we’re safe and together_.  
Their foreheads touch, as they have many times before, but they are outwardly quiet, serene in their joy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Awww, look at them. The fuzzy widdle darlings. Who, let's be honest, really deserve a break at this point. This is a short one, the two remaining chapters are _long_. I hope you'll stick around, even though the issue of getting Pietro back has been resolved. It's not like their lives are uncomplicated just because they both are alive.
> 
> Oh, and [come say hi on tumblr](http://annamatopoetry.tumblr.com/)!


	10. Far Beneath The Ground We’re Walking There’s a Darkness And It’s Dying to Get Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The nurse hovers just behind them them all the way up to Wanda’s apartment. Wanda’s not entirely sure if it’s for her benefit or for Pietro’s - he’s the one who was a hair from death less than twelve hours ago, but she also knows that she looks like something ate her and then spat her back out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for your lovely comments <3 Like I said, the story doesn't end with Pietro coming back, and everyone has adjustments -and promises - to make.

The nurse hovers just behind them them all the way up to Wanda’s apartment. Wanda’s not entirely sure if it’s for her benefit or for Pietro’s - he’s the one who was a hair from death less than twelve hours ago, but she also knows that she looks like something ate her and then spat her back out. She feels it too. But satisfied that they survived the five-minute walk and elevator ride, the nurse leaves, and they close the door behind themselves. It’s the first time they’ve been on their own since Seoul, several eternities ago.

Without a word, Pietro wraps his arms around her, pulls her to him. They hold each other close, close, her head against his chest, his lips pressed against the top of her head. They just stand there, neither of them wanting to end the embrace, until they realize they’re both swaying gently from exhaustion. But her bed is wide enough for the two of them - not that they’d care if if wasn’t - and they both check out almost the moment they lay their heads on the pillow.

Out of pure habit, Wanda wakes in a blind panic, his name on her lips. But he’s there, his eyes calm as he strokes her cheek.  
“I’m here, Wandika. Right here.”  
Her breathing is stabilizing. By all rights, it should be him panicking, he’s the one who died, who was tortured.  
_But I didn’t have to try to live on my own_  
“Promise me you’re never leaving again.”  
“I promise. We will always be together. Always and forever.”  
“Always and forever.”

It’s a ridiculous promise, a childish promise, they should know it better than anyone, but in the face of what has happened they allow themselves to pretend, if only for now. It must be mid-afternoon, and they probably should get up, but neither of them want to. They’re in a little cocoon under the blanket, still and warm and safe and together, and they try to draw it out as long as possible. Sometime soon, they’ll be interrupted, be that as it may. But for now, they want to remain content. They’re breathing she same air. Everything should be easy now, only it isn’t. With Pietro gone, Wanda has allowed her mind to go down paths she’s never allowed it before, it’s only natural that it comes back to haunt her. She can keep what she’s thinking hidden from him, but she can’t keep her own eyes from wandering over his jawline, still half-hidden in stubble, his neck, the hollow at the bottom of his throat. She wants so badly to run her fingers through his hair, taste him. The _want_ is so strong in the pit of her stomach that she can almost taste it. It’s hard not to lose her grip on herself or get transfixed entirely. But she can do it now, as she has before, she just needs to concentrate a little harder.

 

The first time they eat together in the mess hall, only Sam and Rhodey are there as well. Natasha is still not back from Argentina, and Steve is busy elsewhere. It takes her half of the meal to realize that both Sam and Rhodey are looking at them strangely, although they try to be subtle about it. Rhodey mostly looks amused, Sam looks intrigued. Wanda and Pietro eat as they always have, although doctor-enforced portion control prevents him from taking the leftovers off of her place, almost entirely in verbal silence but in mental contact, laughing every now and then at each other. Leaning against each other as the meal is over. “That enough, little sleepypants?” Pietro asks, and she sighs contentedly, leaning her head on his shoulder, smiling.

She meets Sam in the corridor later.  
“You know, “ he says, “in all of the months that I’ve know you, that’s the first time I’ve seen you smile.”  
He’s not wrong, and she honestly isn’t the jolly type to begin with, preferring to keep her emotions hidden from others when she can; it’s been a survival tactic that she's had for so long it's been incorporated into her personality. Still, is a bit of shock, finding that she feels safe enough around the others to put so much of herself on display. She hasn’t realized how much they’ve grown to really be team over the last few months, while she was just trying to keep from drowning. But she’s glad of this, glad of being able to rejoice openly in Pietro’s presence.

It is another few days before some kind of normality resumes. They’re a blur of follow-up exams, evaluations of Wanda’s own health, conversations with both Steve and Natasha. Once, twice, three times Pietro tries to run at full speed before he is ready, until Dr Cho threatens to have him confined to his room unless he can keep still. Only then does he slow down, but only a little; he’s still three paces ahead of her wherever they walk, running in figurative or literal circles when she sits still. And he’s only that relatively calm when he can see her; even less than before, they venture out of each other’s range of vision. It’s too frightening, the thought of losing the other again.

As for Steve and Natasha, both are less harsh than she expected, but while Steve is frank about the fact that he’d prefer Wanda come directly to him the next time, Natasha is surprisingly understanding of her reticence.

“I’ve kept a lot of secrets in my day. Steve is a terrible liar, but it’s a skill that come in handy, and you didn’t put anyone but yourself in direct danger. Now, the question is how your brother feels about…” she gestures, as if to indicate the room, the NAF, the abstract idea of Wanda being an Avenger, all at once “…all of this?”

That is indeed the question, and Wanda is both excited and apprehensive about showing Pietro what she’s learned. On the one hand, she’s infinitely happy to be able to share this, share anything, with him again, and proud of what her hard work and determination has reaped. On the other, she’s almost embarrassed of how quickly she’s embraced her new life with the Avengers. He’s in her head, he knows why she did what she did, that she needed something to keep her occupied as much as she needed to make things right. But still. It’s very concrete, standing in the practice gym where she’s spent hours every day for the the last months.  
  
_This is my life now._  
  
And he’s here. In it. Miraculously, he’s at the very center of her life again, and she in his, and there’s something uniquely glorious in it that lets her reach beyond her hesitation. So she explains what their training sessions are like, how she’s learned to control her TK in more detail, contain explosions and carry fragile objects across long distances. While they’re talking, Sam and Rhodey walk in, followed by Vision. Pietro remains somewhat wary of them, more perhaps of Vision than of the two humans, but still greets them civilly.  
"You tell him about the levitation yet?” asks Sam. Pietro tilts his head and grins.  
“Yes, tell me about the levitation.”

Smiling, she puts the glass she’s been holding down and takes a step back, gathers her thoughts. Then she kicks off, concentrates on feeling the power flow through her. It’s… surprisingly easy this time. She feels light, weightless and rises towards the tall ceiling faster and more stable than she ever have before. A few feet becomes ten, twenty. Below her, Pietro is watching, his mouth open in a breathless grin, feeling what she’s feeling.

“ _Wandika_ ” There’s excitement and awe in his voice.  
It’s delightful, there really is no better word for it. The pattern of the pale winter sunlight shining through the tall windows, her body feeling both ephemeral and entirely solid, Pietro with her up here and down on the floor below, proud and happy (and also, she can tell, one hundred percent ready to run and catch her, should something go wrong.) She laughs, she can’t not, and he laughs with her. She rises another few feet, somehow operating on pure joy, turning, diving, managing maneuvers in minutes that has taken months of hard work to get even close to mastering. It’s not effortless, she can feel sweat pearl on her forehead, but somehow it feels like it is. She feels as if, like this, together, they can do absolutely anything. They can truly, properly, be a force to reckon with. For good, proper good, this time.

 

A new routine is established once Dr Cho give Pietro a final clean bill of health. Wanda spends less time in the library now, though she still reads, is still eager to learn about the world. But is no longer an escape from an unbearable reality, and in between gym sessions and meals, they are likely to just spend time together. She takes him by the hand and shows him the entire facility, from the residential floors to the grounds, to Dr Cho’s lab and the library. He tires easily those first few days, before a steadily amped up diet and carefully planned physical therapy gives him his strength back.

At that point, Steve invites him into his office and asks him formally if he wants to join the Avengers team. He says yes immediately, but Steve reminds him that neither he nor Wanda is under any obligation to stay, should they choose not to. He must be very well aware of how great her need for an anchor was, back then. But Pietro is steadfast - they are steadfast - that this is what they want to do. They’re both determined to help right the wrongs they’ve committed, no matter how well-intended, and Wanda can tell that Pietro is almost as affected as she is by whatever it is that Steve has, that thing that inspires you and makes you want to do right by him. What’s more important, in the wake of their separation he understands just as well as Wanda does the importance of Bucky Barnes. He might not be able to feel it like she does, but he understands. They have yet to communicate it to Steve, but they both know that if it comes down to an open conflict, he can count on their support.

Lorna calls, the second day, and Wanda apologizes profusely for not being in touch. She’s been so busy, so mentally wound up, so overjoyed and emotional and not herself in the completely opposite direction from a the last few months that she’s checked neither her email nor her phone. Lorna doesn’t seem overly bothered, tells her that Jean gave her the general gist of what has happened, so she hasn’t worried. They talk a little more, about Erik and what to do. Wanda makes a point to ask her wedding planning is going and Lorna sighs deeply, melodramatically and declares that it is about as much fun as having all your teeth pulled while you’re being trampled by a flock of elephants.  
“And then I realized how odd it would be to have anyone but my sister be my maid of honor—“  
Wanda starts protesting, is going to say that she doesn’t mind, really, and she doesn’t know what duties that entail anyway, but Lorna is on a roll and there isn’t really any stopping her.  
“— But I wouldn’t want to put you through that bullshit, and besides, you’re too far away, so I finally decided to go with no bridesmaids. Which is a relief, honestly. But now mom is sulking, and I haven’t even told her about you guys yet.” A short silence. “Sorry, there’s just no easy way to break it, without bringing him into the conversation.”  
“I know that, it’s alright.” Wanda is surprised to find that it’s true; before Pietro came back, during that short time when her tenuous connection to Lorna was all that held her upright, she would have felt hurt But it’s easier now. Everything is easier now.

Lorna and Pietro talk as well. It’s a slower, more awkward conversation, but it happens, and Wanda is glad of it. They’ll get to know each other soon enough.

She keeps in touch with Jean as well, though not as frequently, as Jean has a full-time job, two kids, plus whatever her function in the X-Men entails, to schedule around.  
“I know you’ve been wondering”, says Jean, not even bothering to pretend she hasn’t looked “and I am sure that if Erik had found you back when your family died, you would have been welcome with us.” It’s true, Wanda has been wondering, more and more, what could have become of them, had things turned out only a little bit different. Jean’s calm voice and comforting demeanor helps relieve her anxiety somewhat; they would have had a home in Westchester. The thought is comforting.

Yet, as Wanda is lying awake waiting for 2 a.m. to roll around  - that’s when the nightmares usually wake Pietro up - she knows she isn’t whole. Not quite. She’s happy now, most of of the time, happy in having something she hadn’t known to properly appreciate until it was taken from her, but the wound isn’t fully healed. There’s a tender spot inside of her that she barely dares touching. Pietro is here. They’re together. But it’s no longer them against the world and as odd as their lives are, they’re increasingly normal. Which means that one day he’ll be taken from here again, in a much more mundane way, by life, by duties; some woman will come along and Wanda will stop being the center of his life. To be honest, she never thought they’d live long along to see that day, but now it’s a future she’ll have face. She can feel tears prickle in her eyes. In that moment, she hates how conflicted her feelings are; she has long since stopped feeling shame that the man she desires is her brother, though she strive to hide it from others to avoid being judged. No, the reason for her anger is far simpler: it’s something they can’t share. They share everything, and yet this is something she has to keep to herself. It’s a bolted door in a doorway that has been wide open their whole lives, and it _hurts_ .  
She is too distracted to notice that Pietro has started breathing faster and is already in a cold sweat. A thought is all it takes to soothe him, and he rolls over, still mostly asleep; wraps an arm around her, pulls her towards him and tangles a fist in her hair. Still blinking away tears, she falls asleep breathing into his chest. It’s moments like this she lives for. They’re small, but it is all they have.

 

Christmas sneaks up on them. Just a week after Pietro comes back to her, it’s Thanksgiving. Since she Pietro have no particular relationship to, or indeed knowledge about, the holiday, they listen with curiosity as Rhodey and Sam go on and on and on about the food. As it turns out, the entire facility is operating on minimum, most of the staff on leave to spend time with their families. Only Dr Cho’s medlab is as busy as usual. Wanda and Pietro go outside for a walk, enjoying the quiet, the cold autumn air, and each other’s company as they haven’t been able to in a long time. When they return, they're frankly startled by the amount of food laid out on the table. It’s Sam who has been organizing it, but apparently everybody else have helped cooking. Wanda finds it hard to believe that they can possibly eat that much; she limits herself to some turkey, a little sweet potato and some rolls. But she forgets that they have both Steve and Pietro, and that apparently Rhodey and Sam can put away more than they appear to. Still, there is plenty of food remaining when they’re all painfully full.  
“Turkey leftovers is part of the point,” Natasha explains, smiling, and Sam nods enthusiastically.

They are perhaps less impressed with the fact that the rest of the evening is spent in front of the TV, watching an American football game.  
“Right”, says Pietro, “the game you call football because you don’t use your feet and there’s no proper ball involved.” And a heated but not unfriendly debate starts between him and Sam, about the virtues of American football versus soccer, until Natasha and Rhodey shush them. Steve is laughing in his armchair and Wanda has fallen asleep on the couch with her head in Pietro’s lap, his ever-fidding fingers hopelessly entangled in her hair.

And then, apparently, Christmas begins. Rhodey tries to make them watch some kind of parade the day after Thanksgiving, but they’ve reached their limit. Instead, they’re marveling that Americans apparently spend most of a day off from work queuing in stores. Well, not everyone. They take another walk that evening, drive to the nearest town, the one where what she once thought was Pietro’s final resting place has been replaced with an empty stoneless lot. On almost every house in town, there’s at least one light garland  - or a thousand. It’s a terrible waste, for a country where there are still children starving, but it’s a magnificent kind of waste, they both find it difficult to take their eyes off it.

It’s been years since they actually celebrated Christmas. Their parents were nominally, if not devoutly, Catholic, and they remember presents and hymns, back before the church was destroyed, back before everything was destroyed. Now, apparently they have a partial Jewish heritage to consider as well, and Wanda supposed she ought to do more research into that. As much as ambivalence she carries against Erik as a person, as a political figure, she can’t deny his heritage, those who came before them, those whose eyes and smiles and anger they’ve inherited. Being either Roma or Jewish, she muses, the amount of adversities their ancestors would have had to deal with just to survive is staggering. They have really had all the odds against them. And she and Pietro they exist. They’re walking here in a small town in upstate New York, in The United States of America, Planet Earth, watching Christmas lights and existing, hand in hand. They will do right by those who came before them. They will life to the fullest, and be as good as they can, they deserve nothing less.

It’s ambitious, as far as promises go, and Wanda realizes that they might not be able to fulfill it at all times. That life will throw things in their path that sets them back, that makes them forget who they are and what they want, but they can do their best. They can remind each other where they come from and what matters. She squeezes Pietro’s hand through the mitten she’s wearing.  
  
As for as continuing the line, she is really starting to hope that Lorna will have that bit covered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wanda, Wanda, Wanda, I've been writing you like this since October, so I am just going to spit it out: I don't think your coping mechanisms are entirely healthy. Just saying.
> 
> \---
> 
> Guys. It's been a ride. There's another chapter to go, but, BUT, if outright maxicest doesn't sit well with you, you may want to end here. No spoilers. Or, well, total spoilers. But next chapter also has some X-Men so... 
> 
> \---
> 
> The title comes from the excellent song Raspberry Lips by Hello Saferide:
> 
> Far beneath the  
> ground we're walking  
> there's a darkness,  
> there's a darkness  
> there's a darkness  
> and it's dying to get out
> 
> If we're happy  
> it will find us  
> search with torches  
> until it finds us  
> so I close my eyes  
> and think about  
> raspberry lips


	11. If We're Happy It Will Find Us, Search With Torches Until It Finds Us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When spring comes, Jean and Scott finally invite them to the Mansion. Wanda drives. She has come to like it, and for all that Pietro enjoys lifting her up and carrying her where they are going, he doesn’t seem to mind leaning back with the window part open, lazily observing the springtime New England landscape flying past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter specific warnings: this chapter contains consensual incest. It's in the main tags, but it's been pretty much talk only until now. If we used Ye Olde Rating System, this would probably be R.

When spring comes, Jean and Scott finally invite them to the Mansion, and Lorna announces that she and Alex will be up too, not having been in New York since November, and not having met Pietro in person.

Wanda drives. She has come to like it, and for all that Pietro enjoys lifting her up and carrying her where they are going, he doesn’t seem to mind leaning back with the window part open, lazily observing the springtime New England landscape going past. Wanda enjoys the sense of calm control the car gives her; no special power, no magic, no altered reality, just a ton of steel and combustion engine obeying the movements of her hands, the light press of her feet on the gas pedal. The wind is in Pietro’s hair, messing it up as bad as running does, and the sun is warm on their faces through the windshield.

It’s not a long drive to the mansion, and as they pass the sign saying “Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters”, Wanda ponders that a place where the future dwells has such a old-fashioned name. She drives up the call box, and it’s Kitty who responds and buzzes the gate open. Wanda’s eyes linger on the the large, ivy-covered stone building. Unlike so much else in this country, it can’t have changed much in the last few hundred years. Sure, it’s been repaired and the landscape around it has been altered, but the building itself seems stable, like a rock in an ocean of time. She wonders what it would have been like, growing up in a place like this. What they could have been like, had Erik come to find them and taken them here after their parents’ death. Ten years ago, the school was already running, from what Jean has told her. There would have been students here all all ages, although they would have been among the younger. Jean said that a girl named Theresa, who graduated just two years ago, had been here since she was eleven, but that had been the longest residence, not counting Jean and Scott’s adopted daughter.  
“It does no good,” says Pietro, putting his hand on hers, which is still resting on the steering wheel, although they have stopped in the drive, “to think about what could have been. Now is now.” He shrugs lightly and she knows that he’s right, but she can’t help wondering. And it feels good, so good, that he knows what she’s thinking without asking, without even needing their ever-open mental link.

The air is warm outside, and there are kids playing on the vast lawn, only some of them interested enough in the newcomers to even give them  second glance. Then Jean comes out on the stairs and waves them inside.  
The inside is as splendid as the outside, all wood paneling and strategically placed plants or pieces of art. Wanda wonders silently about the wisdom of putting glass busts and fragile antique vases in a place where children run around, but equally silently, though amused, Jean informs her that the art is mainly copies of pieces Professor Xavier owns but stores elsewhere.

They’re given what Jean refers to as “the grand tour” of the building, the stables and the gardens. Scott joins them halfway through, along with a small boy, maybe six or seven years old, auburn-haired and freckled.  
“Nathan,” says Jean, ruffling his hair, “do you want to say hi to Wanda and Pietro?”  
The boy nods shyly, but doesn’t actually say anything until Wanda crouches down across from him. She acutely remembers being small and negligible, everyone towering over her. Granted, she isn’t exactly a giant now either, but she finds that interacting on the same physical level as kids can help. And it does; after some hesitation, Nathan takes her by the hand and takes over the tour leadership from his parents. It changes the focus a bit from the history of buildings to the pool and the jungle gym at the far end of the playground. He is more hesitant towards Pietro, who eventually wins him over by means of a number of consecutive somersaults over the tallest monkey bars. Pietro does look a little queasy afterward, though.

 Later in the den, some of the younger X-Men, all of whom are only a few years older than them, in their mid-to-late twenties, are playing some sort of board game (though it’s not entirely obvious to what rules even to the participants). There’s Kitty, who Wanda remembers from the flight from Romania, and the co-pilot, whose name - well, moniker - is Rogue. There’s another man she remembers, though she never learned his name; he introduces himself as Bobby. The others are Jubilee, Pete, as well as Remy, who arrives later. By the way Pete and Kitty sit, nestled up against each other, makes it obvious that they’re a couple. He calls her Katya, and it stick with Wanda immediately. They all greet Wanda and Pietro cheerfully, Katya and Rogue doing her best to bring them into the conversation. Jubilee… isn’t, though she’s keeping her eyes on Pietro in a way that Wanda definitely doesn’t like when she thinks the rest of them aren’t looking. She quickly takes over, though, when the topic comes back to the game they’re playing.  
“Please, Iceman,” she says to Bobby, “I’ve played this game for a decade. I know the fucking rules, now give me a card.”  
Bobby is reading the booklet. “I’m not sure, it says here that unless you’ve been able to collect…”  
“Card, now.”  
“Just give her the card, Bobby” says Pete, a sounding little tired, “so we can be done and go outside while it’s still light out.” He is exaggerating a little, it’s only early afternoon, but then again, maybe he isn’t. They soon finish the game - Jubilee wins - and decide that they want to show Wanda and Pietro around some more. Jean already showed them most of the gardens, but once Bobby and Jubilee get started, the tour they end up giving is altogether different. They practically grew up at the school, so every tree, basketball court and shrubbery has storied that they tell to the amusement of both their new audience and their old friends. Several times, Jubilee interrupts the others to tell what she finds a particularly interesting anecdote, or to elaborate on the ones the others have told, whether she was there or not. Wanda frowns.

“Did Scott tell you about the maze?” asks Katya, and Wanda nods. As they left the main house, he had showed them the maze, and pointed out that the center couldn’t be seen from the mansion.  
“It’s a ritual for, well, new kids mostly,” Bobby fills in. “He says was one of the first things the Professor told him when he came here, too, and now we make sure to tell newcomers. It’s nice, knowing that although you are surrounded by other kids, there’s somewhere where you can be left alone if you like.”  
They make the entire round again, adding a layer of history to their understanding of the school. Jubilee, meanwhile, has simply walked past Wanda up to Pietro’s side. She’s talking about the pool, some party some years ago, and he’s laughing, flirting along. Wanda, having had enough at this point, smiles her very sweetest smile at them.  
“Oh Pietro,” she says, as innocently as she can and with a saccharine voice, adding a layer of ice only in the last few words. “I’m so glad you’ve finally found someone who moves as fast as you do.”

Silence falls. Jubilee’s mouths hangs half-open, as if on the cusp on the response for a fraction of a second. Rogue very pointedly does not smile. She looks like she wants to, but she ultimately doesn’t, so Wanda still counts it as a victory. Katya is definitely grinning, and Wanda gets the distinct impression that while she genuinely likes Jubilee, she also likes when people push back against her. Pete and Bobby are pointedly looking anywhere but at the rest of them.  
Pietro appears stumped as well. Then his surprised expression gives way to an annoyed one. When Wanda quietly turns and heads back to the mansion, he doesn’t attempt to follow.

  

Pietro is rarely angry at Wanda, simply haven’t had reason to, but now he’s teetering towards irritation. After she leaves, he makes awkward conversation for a few minutes, until another car comes up the drive. It’s Lorna and Alex and, relieved, he waves in greeting. He has only talked to Lorna via Skype before, but they’ve been getting along pretty well. Now she walks up to him and gives him a small hug.  
“it's good to see you alive,” she says, smiling, and Alex shakes his hand.

 

If Wanda was tense leaving Pietro and the others in the garden, she’s ten times more so while exiting the elevator on the fourth floor. She’s been invited to Professor Xavier’s office, along with Jean. She doesn’t know exactly why she is so nervous, but there’s something about other telepaths that makes her feel very, very small. She knows very little about the elderly Charles Xavier, mostly just things Jean has told her. That he’s been a father figure for her as well as for Scott since they were teens, that he knew Erik very well, perhaps the best, for many years. That he was the headmaster for the school for many years as well, before he retired and Scott took over that job. That his moral standard are very high, which is one of the reasons she’s so nervous; she doesn’t exactly have a spotless record. So her heart is beating hard when she knocks on the door.

Her worries appear unfounded, as Charles Xavier is very kind. He doesn’t as much as scold her for her past transgression, possibly because he is able to tell that she has done so plenty herself already. Where he’s sitting, in a wheelchair on the other side of a huge mahogany desk that must be an antique, he looks at her with kind eyes. Wanda remembers that his degree is in psychology, and if the possibility of being evaluated unsettles her a little, she tries not let that show either. She want to ask him about Erik, about whether he was always as angry, about what he was like when he was younger, but she feels it isn’t the place. Instead, Xavier and Jean brings up one of the few things Wanda has not thought about the last few months.

“I’d like to talk about what happened in Romania,” says Jean, and Wanda is puzzled as to exactly what she means. Then Jean’s mind touches hers and she can feel what it felt like from outside of her head, for the universe to wobble and change from one second to the next. She looks down into her lap, not knowing what to say, what would be the wrong or right thing.  
“There is no right or wrong thing to say”, says Xavier, and Wanda doesn’t know if he’s even aware that she hasn’t been speaking aloud. “We are merely trying to find out exactly what you’re capable of. Reality warping is… entirely new. I haven’t seen anything like it before.”  
“I honestly don’t know,” she starts. “I’ve always, well, since the experiments—“ Xavier and Jean are looking at each other for the blink of an eye, concerned “— been able to see, I don’t know - the edges of reality, I guess?”  
Instead of wasting more time, she chooses to show them. First, the fraying edges she experienced after HYDRA, how they seemed to recede in the time after, how they came back after Pietro was gone. The memory of the loss of him is still sore;  tender to the touch and more so after their earlier half-spat in the garden. She tried hard to hide it, but doesn’t know how successful she is. Finally, she shows what she did, her thoughts as she used all of her remaining power in a desperate attempt to fix what was broken.

 “I see,” says Xavier, revealing exactly nothing of what that is. “And you achieved this with no prior training of using this particular power?” She nods. “Do you think you would be able to do it again?”  
“I guess? I am not sure I ever will, though. I only changed a very little part of the world, and it nearly took everything out of me.” Xavier nods again. “Why?” she asks. “Is it important?”  
“It’s our hypothesis,” says Jean carefully, like she’s weighing her words “that Raven was only partially right. You _are_ a mutant, as is your brother, but it appears the experiments did change something about you. There are are really no markers on your DNA to explain the telepathy, but there is something there that’s very similar to someone I met with the ability to time travel. That’s not to far from reality warping and TK; it’s moving through the universe rather than moving the universe around you, but the same principles apply.”

Wanda sits very still. She thinks that she has been suspecting something like this all along; that’s why she has been having trouble fully believing what Raven told her. She feels relieved. Ok, so she’s a mutant _plus_ , but she’s still a mutant. She still belongs here. With Lorna, with —  
“And Pietro,” she asks, “what about him?”  
Jean shrugs. “There is nothing to indicate that he has anything beyond the mutation nature intended for him.” Wanda nods, calmed. cHe’ll be happy to know that, once they’ve both calmed down enough to talk about it. Maybe tonight.

 

“Oh shove it.” Lorna shakes Pietro’s shoulder playfully. “Like you don’t have a dorky code name that you haven’t told anyone about.” She has just told him that her chosen one is Polaris, replacing her awful Skype username a little after she first visited the Mansion. It’s a tradition here, even for those who aren’t X-men, to have a code name or callsign that hints at their power. To Pietro’s surprise, he and Lorna are getting on famously, as awkward as their initial Skype conversations were.  
He grins. “That’s information that’s only available on an as-needed basis.”  
“Jeez. I bet if I asked Wanda, she’d spill in a second.”  
“I can tell you hers.”  
“I already know hers, jackass. I want to know yours.”  
“So you can make fun of me.”  
“Well, obviously, that’s the whole point”  
“Fine.” He stops, holds up his hands in mock surrender. “It’s Quicksilver. Stark came up with it, which means it’s stupid, but there you have it.”  
Lorna, who has stopped walking, gives him a look that he can’t quite decipher.  
“Oh,” she says after a brief pause. She looks pensive rather than amused. “Oh. That makes so much more sense now.”  
“What does?”  
“The tattoo.”  
“The what now?”  
“Wanda’s mercury tattoo.”  
“Right.” He nods, pretending he knows what she’s talking about while something is clenching and unclenching in his midsection. He’s torn between feeling moved and hurt; hurt that Wanda hasn’t even told him about it, moved that she had a memory of him engraved in her own skin. It shouldn’t be surprising, and yet it is. Their affection had always been both profoundly physical, grounded in a life spent within feet of each other, and deeply metaphysical, nonverbal. But never symbolic. It is as if something has changed, has shifted their very foundation, and as little as it is, it scares him.

 _Of course it changed_ , he tells himself. _You died, idiot. It changed everything._

It’s not that he wasn’t pissed at her before, for the unwarranted sass, it’s just that they have never been able to be angry with each other for very long. Now all he can think about is needles anchoring something symbolizing him onto her very body, and oh boy, is that the wrong place for his brain to go. Damn. It only takes a minute of insufficient vigilance and all of his carefully built resolve nearly collapse. Jubilee. Right. Jubilee, in her bright yellow jacket and tight jeans hugging her ass. That’s where his mind ought to be, non on his sister. But, regaining a grip on himself and in a fit of uncharacteristic sentimentalism, he needs to find Wanda, needs to bury his face in her hair and let her know in any way propriety allows that she’s really everything to him, that he doesn’t mean to hurt her. But she’s upstairs, in deep conversation with Jean and Professor Xavier, and it will have to wait.

  
They’re both quiet in the car on the way back home. Pietro looks pensive in the passenger seat, and Wanda is still irritated enough not to want to talk. Why does he have to have such terrible taste in women? If either Rogue or Katya has been single, she wouldn’t have minded for a second if he chose to pay attention to them, but no, he had to pick Jubilee, who grated on Wanda’s nerves the second she met her. It irritates her much more than she likes to admit, and there’s the lingering worry that she’s lying to herself about Rogue and Katya anyway. So she says nothing.

But when they’ve parked in the garage, Pietro doesn’t leave immediately. Instead, he reaches for her left arm, holds her hand for a second, then angles it upward to look at the stylized caduceus on the inside of her wrist. He hasn’t, she realizes, noticed it before. Now he lets him thumb run over is slowly, thoughtfully.  
“You didn’t tell me.” There’s no accusation in his voice, he’s just stating a fact.  
“I thought you had noticed. Besides, you’re back, it doesn’t really matter anymore.”  
“It always matters,” he says, with emphasis. Then he lowers his head and places a kiss, feather light, on her wrist. There’s nothing odd about it, a chaste gesture just like the ones they’ve given each other a thousand times before, lips against skin in pure comfort, appreciation. Yes, there’s something about it that upsets her. She is carefully controlling her breathing as they take the elevator upstairs, though he doesn’t appear to notice. She’s going to have to find a better way to deal with this before it overpowers her entirely. Before she ruins everything.

 

It’s sunny in the morning of May 1st, but the weather reports has promised rain later in the day, so they pack their umbrellas. They take the train, not talking much but rejoicing in a mutual feeling of delighted anticipation. Wanda is excited because she gets to show him all of this, Americans coming together for solidarity in common causes, just as they had, just as they had believed was impossible here. Pietro is excited mainly because his sister is, because he enjoys the chance to get to stretch his legs, if only a little, and some free time in the city. He hasn’t been to a rally since before HYDRA and can only vaguely recall the very specific elation found in a common cause. Still, he looks forward to remembering.

Wanda is much less surprised than last year when the almost spiritual feeling of connectedness fills her as the march starts. This time, she knows it’s coming, and she’s no longer a broken vessel, but part of a whole, come here to participate and give as much as to be lifted up. Nevertheless, it rushes over her as they walk, hand in hand. The world, she realizes, is changed not by individuals, but by groups of people, people sharing a common rage but also a common determination. She has known this before, back before everything started, but lost it in the mad scramble for power, though HYDRA, though Ultron. It had somehow escaped her. Sure, she’ll change the world as an Avenger  - they’ll change the world as Avengers, side by side, if only by being two Roma kids who are also superheroes. But they make another kind of change here, as part of a large wave of people. She looks up at Pietro and knows that he has understood, as well. 

After the march, they’re milling around with a thousand people slowly making their way down streets or to subway stations. She can spot Christopher, handing out flyers in the same place as last year, and waves at him. He sees her through the crowd and waves back. Weaving through the mass of people, she makes her way over to the sidewalk where he’s standing, tugging Pietro along behind with her.  
“Christopher,” she says, as she reaches him. “I want you to meet my brother Pietro.” Christopher, who had been looking a little crestfallen, immediately lights up and shakes Pietro’s hand enthusiastically. Pietro is a little more guarded, giving Wanda an odd look when no one’s watching, but responds in kind.  
“So, you guys planning on coming to to hang out lately?” He grins and shakes the bunch of papers he’s holding. “I have flyers!”  
Wanda smiles. “I think I can find my way. Same place?”  
“Same place. See you then!”  
“See you!” she calls as they’re leaving, Pietro uncharacteristically expressionless next to her. “It will be fun,” she tells him. “ They have music and good coffee. You’ll like it. Really. I promise.” Pietro looks at her oddly, silently, then follows her to the subway stop.  She doesn’t go down to the city nearly as much as she used to before he came back to her, and he’s been here less than a handful of time, so Wanda always takes the lead. It’s not unusual, for them, but there’s something oddly sullen about him today. She decides not to linger on it.

Compared to last year, the trip over takes a long time; there are people everywhere, the train is first late and then delayed on route. As they’re standing, Pietro holding on the handrail and Wanda holding on to Pietro, she is suddenly worried again. He has yet to dislike any aspect of her life from when he was gone, has yet to disagree with a single decision she has made, and she doesn’t entirely know why she still lets it bother her, but there it is. They both require the other’s approval, and most of the time, that approval is instantaneous because they are always together. This, this many-month-span apart, is something entirely different.

With the delays, the first band has already started playing by the time they get there, and they don’t get a seat. But they hum along, Wanda recognizing some more songs this time around, and Pietro enjoys himself as much as she is; he is much more musical than she’s ever been. Possibly, she muses, that’s why he gets along so well with Lorna despite the initial awkwardness. It’s not until after, when the crowd has cleared out and they’ve been invited over to Christopher and his friends’ table, that things get awkward.

It’s Pietro who picks a fight. Because of course it is.

It starts out nicely enough; the rest are welcoming both towards Wanda and Pietro; Wanda and Brianna make jokes about young men and their guitars, and they’re all agreeing on the need for worldwide organization. They talk about intersectional politics, allies across race lines, and feminism. It’s a friendly discussion, people are riding the wave of enthusiasm from the march.

It doesn’t go wrong until they’re talking about participation, about voting. A young man called Jake, who is wearing a brown hoodie and a baseball hat, starts talking about how pointless voting is, how they’re never going to make any progress with a representative democracy because decisions are too far removed from the people. Pietro, who like Wanda has been to more rallies for voting rights than they can count, for the right to be democratically represented, but who unlike Wanda doesn’t give a rat’s ass about what these people thinks about him, has had enough.  
“That’s an astoundingly childish thing to say, isn’t it?” he puts it as a question to force a response, and when he doesn’t get one, continues; “you realize that there are parts of the world where people are killed for even asking to vote?”  
Jake, put on the spot, huffs. “That’s not the point!”  
“Then what is your point?”  
Wanda sees exactly what the point is, the brokenness of the American political system, its reliance on money, the growing irrelevance of the electoral college. She is perfectly aware that Pietro sees that just as well as she does, but he’s got his mind set on being uncooperative.  
“Because,” he continues, “it sounds a lot like something a spoiled American kid, who’s had enough to eat every single day of his life, who’s never dealt with any actual struggle, mouthing off.”

Christopher tries to cut in, attempting to smooth things over, and it’s exactly the wrong thing to do.

“And you?” Pietro interrupts before Christopher can even gets a proper start, “what have you lived through?” He stands. “How many of your friends have been shot or disappeared, for going to the wrong rally? For how long have you had to go without food?” Christopher avoids his eyes.  
Wanda’s heart sinks. Things had been going to well, they’d been having such a good time, does he have to ruin it? She glares at Pietro, hisses in Romany.  
“What was that for? Can’t we play nice? They were trying to be friendly.”  
“Your pretty red-haired friend, perhaps. The rest of them? They’re looking for some token foreign friends to feel inclusive and diverse. And they should! They think they understand how the world works, but they’re just spoiled brats.” He snorts.

And it’s not that he’s wrong. But compared to them, _everyone_ is spoiled, and she knows for a fact that everyone in the room, with the possible exception of Jake, the sullen boy in the hoodie, have the best intentions. Pietro, however, has decided not to care and is glaring at Christopher again. Which is the most annoying part of all; it was Christopher he was aiming for the entire time. As soon as someone pays her a little bit of attention, he goes off.

“You now what?” says Wanda, louder and in English this time. Does he think he’s the only person who’s angry? “You don’t have to be helpful. But if you’re going to be unhelpful, go do that somewhere else.”  
It’s surprisingly easy, turning her irritation towards him, he who is her other half, and although she flinches inwardly as she feels his hurt, she forced herself to stand up straight and meet his eyes evenly. They stand like that for a good few seconds, neither of them backing down, until Pietro nods. Gathering his jacket from the back of chair, he leaves the room “I guess I’ll see you later,” he says as he shuts the door behind him.

Wanda sighs and takes a deep breath. It’s equally painful every time they’re in disagreement, but at least this time she knows for a fact that he’s the one being unreasonable. Oh, she’s very well aware that it has been her, before. She knows she is sharp-tongued and occasionally mean when it comes to Pietro and girls, and she realizes very well the parallels with what just happened. She just tried very hard not to think about it, because they’re alive and together now, and nothing about them has to change ever again. Never mind that it’s already started to.  
“Sorry, guys,” she says, sitting down. “It’s just a touchy topic.” Jake is still glaring, but Christopher smiles, if a little forced.  
“It’s alright, it's not like he’s wrong. We do need a little kick in the ass every now and then.” Then they veer every so slightly from the specific topic of voting, and Jake soothes his wounded ego by being pretty knowledgeable about community organization across social media. It may not be a ruined night after all.

Pietro changes his mind almost instantly. They aren’t supposed to be apart, and the last time they spent more than ten minutes away from each other, he managed to get himself killed. That thought is not a comfort. He starts walking quickly down the street; it’s almost stopped raining now, which is good, as he left his umbrella with Wanda. Then he turns around the corner and begins rounding the block. But he can’t round the same block for the rest of the night, can he? Maybe he needs time away from Wanda, time to let the roar in his chest calm down, yet he doesn’t know if he dares straying too far. Then again, he could make it back in a second, and angry or not, he trusts that she would let him know if something happened.

He starts running.

It’s a relief to be able to move at his own pace, watching the city blocks as he passes them, people and cars moving as through molasses, but he, at last, free to transcend it. He moves in a large circle, stopping every now and then to catch his breath. As long as he’s running he doesn’t have to think, doesn’t have to consider what will happen the day Christopher, or some other guy, it doesn’t matter who, turns out to be the real deal. Sooner or later, Wanda will realize what kind of life she could have, and while he couldn’t deny her a single thing, it doesn’t mean he can’t carry a grudge against the man who would take her away from him. There is nothing he knows as well as Wanda’s love, but he also knows that it isn’t - shouldn’t be - forever. He has known that truth and fought it all his life.

An insistent tapping to his leg disturbs him, and he slows down. It takes him a moment to realize that his phone is ringing, and he stops to answer. It’s Lorna, and he wonders if he could ask her for advice. He’s still more hesitant to rely on her than Wanda is, but then, unlike her, he’s never had to be on his own.

“What’s good?”  
He can hear her snort on the other end. “All good here. How’re you?”  
“Eh, I’ve been better.” When she doesn’t respond, he continues, “I managed to piss Wanda off.”  
“On purpose?”  
“No. Yes. Kind of. I’m not sure.”  
“So you apologize. It’s not that hard. I now how close you two are, she’ll forgive you.”  
“You’re probably right. I’m just not sure I deserve it.”  
He can hear Lorna pause on the other end. To her, it’s a moment, to him, the better half of an eternity.  
“Well,” she says finally, “is that really your choice to make? So you did some dumb shit. I do dumb shit, we all do all the time. I don’t know the specifics of your dumb shit today, but I do know that when it comes to the people I love, I don’t get to decide how they feel about it.”  
“Perhaps.” he replies. “Sorry, did you call just to spout advice in my general direction?” It’s a lot testier than she deserves, but he’s still angry. With the world, with himself.  
“Ah, nope, mister personable. My parents have been informed of you guys’ existence, you’re been formally added to the wedding guest list and will get an invitation in the mail in a few days. Ge a tux, Quicksilver.”

They say goodbye after some small talk, and Pietro tucks the phone into his pocket. He wants desperately not to think about what to tell Wanda, wants to lie to her and pretend nothing has happened, but realized that is probably not an option. He’s also feeling a little guilty for involving an unwitting Lorna in their emotional mess. There’s a subway stop a few blocks down, he ducks into there to hide from the rain, which is picking up again. He needs to think. He needs to think all of this over carefully.

When Wanda leaves the cafe, it’s dark out, and the rain is still pouring. Pietro is waiting for her under a light post in an otherwise empty street. He has definitely been rained on, but he’s not entirely soaked, so she doesn’t think he’s been standing there for very long. She walks up to him and he gives her a long, strange look.  
“I’m sorry”, he says, then, “I was out of line.”  
She just shrugs. She isn’t even angry anymore.  
“It was selfish of me. Denying you…“ he gestures vaguely, attempting to indicate the two of them but not finding the words  “…but at the same time not letting you find happiness with someone else. “ He takes her hand “I was — I _am_ afraid of losing you.”  
Oh shit. So that's where this is going. It isn’t a conversation she wants to have. In fact, it’s one she’s been running from for months now. Hiding her apprehension, she smiles fondly.  
“Dolt. You can’t lose me. I’ve told you a million times, we belong together, we’re as…“  
“…as good as one. You know what I mean.” She does, but she isn’t about to admit it, not if she can still steer them back to safer topics.  
“Pietro, please. I couldn’t let death separate us. If a bomb couldn’t, if the authorities couldn’t, if HYDRA couldn’t, then why would some guy be able to? I’ll never love you less. And besides…”  
Now, over four years and who can count how many turn of events later, it’s her turn to smile sadly.  
“Besides, I would never have you do anything you don’t want.”

He’s still holding her hand, but now he turns it over, letting the pads of his fingers run lightly over her palm. It takes every ounce of control she has not to let her breath hitch.  
“You know what I _want_. It was never about want, it was about morals. Propriety.”  
She can feel her entire body stiffen. They’re threading mined territory, she wants to get out of here as soon as possible, back to calm, back to normal, back to where she knows where they are and what is going to happen. She wants him to never, ever stop touching her her like he is now. But he isn’t done talking.  
“But now I wonder. If nothing really can separate us, maybe it isn’t so wrong. Maybe it is meant to be. Or maybe I just don’t care anymore.” Still looking at her hand rather than her face, he shrugs. “I died. Maybe propriety can go fuck itself.”

Is he saying what she thinks he’s saying? She’d doubt it, but she can feel him just as sure as she can hear him. Now, after years of learning to live with it, after figuring out just how messed up they are and how to deal, she’s supposed to turn right back?

Yes.

Yes. A million times yes. She’d rather be emotionally fucked up with him of every remaining second of her life than well-adjusted and alone for an hour. She tried being on her own, tried adjusting, and it was nigh unbearable. And now he’s here, right here, a foot away. She closes the space. Their faces are an inch from each other, they’re breathing the same air, getting progressively more soaked in the rain as the seconds pass like years. And then she leans forward, upward, and their lips meet, softly, tentatively at first. He tastes like he smells, like her but different, like rain and a little bit like salt. His mouth is so warm. He wraps his arms around her waist, she buries her fingers in his damp hair, kisses deepening, melding them together. The way his body is pressed against hers, so familiar and warm but so different somehow, is enough to make her breath hitch in her throat, for real this time. In her mind, he’s saying her name over and over, _Wandawandawandawanda. My Wanda_. Someone might come out of the cafe at any moment, and she couldn’t care less. They’re so close there wouldn’t be room for a sheet of paper in between them, physical space finally imitating mental. Then he breaks the kiss, buries his face in her hair instead, his breath hot against her skin. She closes her eyes, trembles, feeling like lightning bolts are going off inside her. There’s nothing in the world she wants more than this.

On the train back upstate, they sit with a respectable few inches between them. The car is crowded, but even if it weren’t, the closer to home they get, the more likely they are to meet someone they know. When they have stepped off and the train has continued past the bend, he picks her up and carries her back to the NAF, lightning fast as always. It’s what he always does, but Wanda feels like it’s somehow new, unfamiliar, and she’s giddy with anticipation over what’s coming, longing to close the door to their room and be alone at last. Which is why it’s particularly poor timing that when she enters the lobby, Natasha is waiting, tapping her foot and glancing pointedly at her entirely watchless wrist. Crap. It’s Tuesday. Hand-to-hand combat with Black Widow, who is now grinning, not actually that angry. Still, Wanda doesn’t want to waste her time. She apologizes to Natasha and sees Pietro take off for their apartment. On foot, she runs down to the gym, gets dressed in record time and is ready by the time Natasha strolls in.

The session goes abysmally bad. Natasha gets hit after hit, Wanda fails to block her, is taken down over and over and can’t manage to stop smiling even for a second. At 10:00, having hit the mat for the umpteenth time after failing to pay attention again, she apologizes profusely to a puzzled Natasha and hits the shower. While she does feel bad for having wasted time, she doesn’t feel bad enough to stick around. She puts her dress back on and starts walking back to the apartment, painfully forcing her feet to move at a normal pace, normal stride. She wants to run, wants so badly to be there as fast as she can, but there are still people about, and she has attracted too much attention as it is. Face calm. Feet normal. It takes more time than she can possibly accept, but then she’s there, unlocks the door and closes it behind her.

He’s waiting for her. She could feel the excitement thrumming in him the moment she exited the elevator on their floor, meeting her own. A split second after she closes the door, her back is pushed up against it, his body pressing against hers, their kisses instantly open-mouthed and hungry. So many years of holding back end in that very moment, and she is burning under his touch. He lifts her up, and she wraps her arms around him, can feel his erection through the fabric - about four layers too many - and presses back. He makes a noise into her mouth and she is grinning, even as she never stops kissing him. She reaches for his mind, deepening their bond, feeling more directly what he’s feeling. As it always does when they’re this connected, the concept of time loses its meaning. All there is is _them_ , mouth against mouth, skin against skin, hands feverishly searching for gaps in the fabric of their clothing. Her feet touch the floor again, and she moves her hands in under his t-shirt, runs them up and down his back as his lips leaves hers, start kissing his way down her jaw, her neck, her collarbone. She has to stop for a second, take a breath. This isn’t her imagination, it’s really happening, finally, finally, and the weight of it all is going to her head.

He misinterprets her awe for hesitation and stops, glancing worriedly at her face, but she calms him with a thought, puts her hand on his cheek. Let’s him know exactly that she’s thinking and kisses his mouth again. They’re moving slower, both a little misty-eyes and amused by it. But this is where they belong, this what they are meant to be doing.

She slides her hands up under his shirt again, helps him lift it over his head and is utterly distracted when her hands are given free reign over his arms, his chest. She nibbles a little at his neck just to taste him, until he makes that noise again. It’s like a high, the way the sound he makes fill her entire head, makes her want to do anything, everything, just to hear it again. Then he hikes her dress up to her waist and draws her away from the door, just enough to fit his hands in between it and her skin. Somehow, impossibly, she tries to press herself against both his body and his hands at the same time. Closer, they need to be closer. She squirms, spreads her legs, trying to find friction against him somehow. It’s a relief when he moves his hand back to the inside of her thigh again, then up, to touch her through her panties. _Yes_ , she thinks, directly to him. _Yes_. His responses is less distinct, a mix of amusement, awe, and sheer desire, and it’s only a minute before he pushes the panties to the side to touch her directly. She has to hold onto the doorframe to steady herself. In a moment of clarity, she sends a thankful thought to those girls from his past, because god, is he ever good at this. It can’t hurt to have a near-direct connection to her brain either, but whatever the reason is, it’s amazing, forcing first gasps, then outright moans out of her. It’s almost too much, and she’s thankful when he puts his other arm around her waist to help keep her upright. She keeps bucking against his fingers, it’s never enough, and when he slides one finger inside her but keeps working her clit with his thumb, pleasure begins to build, solidify into a single point of light. More. She needs more. Then it explodes outward and she comes, saying his name over and over as her knees buckle. She has no idea if it lasts five seconds or five million, but when she regains control of herself, he’s still holding her up by her waist.

“I love you,” she manages, because it feels particularly important to say it out loud, just now.  
“Of course you do.” He smirks, but there’s something incredulous about his expression, as if he, like her, can hardly believe they’re doing this. He kisses her again, then;  
“Bed?”  
She nods. “Bed.”  
He lifts her up, and while it would be hyperbole to say that she has never been more grateful for his speed, she is very happy to be in bed the very next second. She strips her dress and panties off, fiddles a little with her bra only because she can see it riles him up. In this particular context, his impatience is delicious. Then she is naked, and leans back to watch Pietro, who is still sitting on the edge of the bed, not having taken his eyes off her for a second. His t-shirt was discarded out in the entryway, and months of a reliable food source and regular hours in the gym has returned him to the physical shape he was in before Ultron. Wanda finds it hard to take her eyes off the way his muscles move under his skin, now that she can finally take a proper look. He takes his jeans and underwear off as she keeps watching him through half-closed eyes. Then they’re together again, naked skin against naked skin, kissing, hands wanting to be everywhere at once. She caresses his stomach, his thigh, then his cock and he inhales sharply, closing his eyes. Soon, though, he shakes his head to stop her.  
“I’m going to have trouble lasting as it is.”  
So she returns to running her hands over the rest of him, as she has longed to, tasting his skin, until they can’t wait any longer. He starts caressing her clit again, and as she trembles with the pleasure of it, rolls over so that he’s on top her. They kiss again, then break off, faces still inches from each other as he pushes into her.

This. This is what she has been waiting for. And it feels good, feels amazing, but not nearly as fate-filled or momentous as she had expected. They’ve broke the last seal, the last taboo, and she assumed she thought there would be more drama to it. But there’s nothing of the sort, just their bodies grinding together in the most exquisite way. Feeling him move is amazing, although excruciatingly slow still, and again she bucks up to meet him, speed them up. Chuckling slightly, Pietro adds a little more speed, a little more force, and Wanda gasps at the sensation. She bends her knees, wraps her legs around him, changing the angle to let him go deeper yet, and now she can’t stop the moans from escaping her. She stretches out another tendril of her mind towards him, and he willingly accepts it, another step closer where she almost didn’t think it was possible. She can no longer tell what is her pleasure and what it his, and between them, between his fingers on her clit, she comes again, hard. He follows, face buried in her neck, her hair muffling the sound of his voice. Time ceases to exist. They’re one being, alone in the universe, there’s no way of knowing where Pietro ends, where Wanda begins. And rather than being frightening, it is beautiful.

They come down panting and sweaty, both with the stupidest smiles on their faces. It’s been a day of breaking boundaries set upon them by others, but that’s all over now. There’s no going back. He rolls off her, lifts up her hand to kiss the wrist with the tattoo again. Then he looks her straight in the eyes.  
“I’m yours,” he says. “Entirely. Always was. Always will be.”  
“Ditto.” She’s not smiling, although she is happy; it is, after all, a serious subject. They’re tied together in so many ways, belonging to each other completely and utterly in ways they didn’t before. She can think of at least a handful of ways in which that probably isn’t healthy, objectively speaking. But there’s no other place in the world she’d rather be.

It’s dark out, and Wanda should really, really go to the bathroom before they fall asleep. She sighs, rolls over and gets up, hoping to make it back before Pietro is out cold.

 

They must have forgotten to close the curtains in the hurry last night, and although on the third floor, there is no danger of being seen, the bright May morning wakes them up early. It has stopped raining, and the bright sunlight floods the room. They’ve slept face to face, but now Wanda burrows her face into Pietro’s shoulder to escape the light. He lets her, gently stroking her hair and her back. She can tell without checking that he’s thinking hard about something, and she should probably interrupt him before he lets himself get all wound up about right or wrong again.  
“What is it?”  
“Oh, I don’t know. Just… this could mean trouble.”  
“We’ve dealt with plenty worse.”  
“I didn’t mean for us. For the Avengers. Can you imagine the PR nightmare if someone finds out?”  
She snorts a little. It isn’t technically funny, but there’s something absurd about the size of it, about the very fact they have become the kind of people who worry about what newspapers write.  
“So we don’t let anyone find out.” She doesn’t bother mentioning that Natasha will figure it out soon, if she hasn’t already. Natasha almost doesn’t count; she’s kept much larger secrets without a fuss. She’d never even let them know what she knows.  
Pietro silently agrees, and Wanda smiles, finally, stretches out like a cat in the sunlight. He kisses her lips, her neck, her breast, her belly button, then lies down next to her. Sooner or later they’ll have to get up and go get breakfast, sooner or later the daily grind of Avenging will require their attention, but for now they are content to lie on the bed. Together, like they were meant to be.

 

fin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man. It ended! I started writing this five minutes past midnight after Halloween, finished it for nano, and then edited the shit out of it. It's going to be sad to stop messing with it (which doesn't mean that I won't go back and find typos in chapter four three weeks from now.) I realize some bits are left hanging, but as much as I care about the twin's parentage and the X-Men, this story is about _them_. It's by no means perfect, but I've never finished anything longer than a drabble before, and I am pretty happy with how it came out.
> 
> Well, it gets to enjoy its week of not being directly canon-contradictory, then it's Civil War time and we'll cry for altogether different reasons.
> 
> A special thanks to @coffeesuperhero for helping me with spy speak and Wanda sass <3

**Author's Note:**

> I would also like to send some thanks to AO3 user Noccalula. I ended up stealing the nickname Wandika from her, as well as the excellent phrase 'sokov punks', and I Don't Hear the Church Bells Chime Anymore was my reason for daring to sit down and write this thing back in November.


End file.
